Top Down or Bottom Up? Nationalist Mobilization Reconsidered, with
Special Reference to Guinea (French West Africa)
ELIZABETH SCHMIDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In September 1958, the people of Guinea voted for immediate
independence from France, overwhelmingly rejecting a constitution that
would have granted the territory junior partnership in a French-
dominated community. Throughout the vast French empire, Guinea, with a
population of only 2.5 million people, was the only territory to vote
"No" to the proposition offered by Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle.1
The referendum's outcome was a major victory for the Guinean branch of
the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), a political party with
affiliates in the fourteen territories of French West Africa, French
Equatorial Africa, and the United Nations trusts of Togo and Cameroon.
While every other RDA branch had fallen into line behind de Gaulle, the
Guinean RDA, under the leadership of a charismatic young trade unionist
named Sékou Touré, had spearheaded the drive for complete and immediate
independence. 1
The decision to oppose the constitution was made two weeks before
the ref- erendum, at a territorial conference attended by some 680
party militants from RDA subsections, neighborhood committees, and
village committees from across Guinea.2 Although Sékou Touré
articulated the party's position, he did not determine it. The final
decision was made by the delegates attending the conference, who voted
solidly against de Gaulle's proposition. Sékou Touré's endorsement of
the "No" vote was, in fact, the result of massive pressure from the
grassroots.3 2
While the RDA position was elaborated and its victory lauded in
La Liberté, the party newspaper read by Western-educated elites,4
nonliterate women celebrated their triumph in songs they had created
for the occasion. Guinean scholar Idiatou Camara recorded one such song
during interviews conducted in 1976?1977:
Guinea says "No"
De Gaulle says "Yes"
One must vote "No"
Comrade Sékou Touré, one must choose the "No"
Yes, one must choose the "No," Sékou Touré
In any case, we have voted "No."5 3
One month before the referendum, Prime Minister de Gaulle had
traveled to Guinea in a futile attempt to sway the vote. At the
airport, he was welcomed by Sékou Touré, president of Guinea's recently
established local government, who was attired in the flowing white
uniform of the RDA. Hundreds of party militants, dressed in handmade
uniforms of cheap white percale, lined the road for fifteen kilometers,
from the airport to the city center. As the motorcade approached, they
cried, "Syli! Syli!" ["Elephant! Elephant!"]?the symbol of the RDA, and
by extension of Sékou Touré personally. Partisans waved homemade
posters emblazoned with elephants and plastered them on buildings
throughout the capital. As the women danced, accompanied by traditional
tam-tams, balafons, and coras, the crowd sang, "The elephant has
entered the city!"6 In his memoirs, de Gaulle recalled: "from the
airport to the center of the town the crowd [was] evenly distributed in
well-drilled battalions along both sides of the road ... The women were
lined up in front in their hundreds, each group wearing dresses of the
same cut and color, and all, as the procession passed by, jumping,
dancing and singing to order."7 Later that day, Sékou Touré officially
received the French prime minister and addressed the Territorial
Assembly, providing colonial authorities with an advance copy of his
roneotyped speech.8 4
This confluence of popular and elite nationalism was
characteristic of the Guinean RDA, a broad-based ethnic, class, and
gender alliance that incorporated Muslims, Christians, and
practitioners of indigenous religions. The movement embraced Guinean
speakers of Maninka, Susu, Pulaar, Kissi, Kpelle, and Loma, as well as
those who spoke languages indigenous to other French African
territories. As the RDA struggled to build an independent nation from
this heterogeneous base, its message, conveyed by both masses and
elites, was simultaneously anticolonial and nationalist. 5
Although Guinea was alone in its embrace of independence in 1958,
it was not unique. In the post?World War II era, nationalist movements
burgeoned across the African and Asian continents, resisting
imperialism of diverse origins. Other African territories followed
Guinea's lead, and by 1960, most French "possessions" had regained
their sovereignty. The Guinean RDA was thus one among scores of African
and Asian movements that waged successful struggles for national
independence in the postwar period. So, why study the Guinean
nationalist movement, and why study it now? Decades after the fact, the
Guinean case warrants scholarly consideration for the important lessons
it can teach us about anticolonial nationalism in the non-Western world?
lessons with enduring relevance. What we learn from the Guinean case
will help to push nationalist historiography in new directions. 6
The study of African and Asian nationalism is not new. In recent
years, however, there have been significant shifts in scholarly
approach. The wave of anticolonial nationalism that swept Africa and
Asia after World War II sparked new interest in what previously had
been considered a uniquely European phenomenon. Many of the first
studies approached nationalism from the perspective of intellectual
history. Exploring the interaction of indigenous and Western ideas,
early scholars of Asian nationalism generally focused on religious and
secular intellectuals and political elites.9 Although the history of
ideas remains a forceful current in the field,10 recent studies have
paid greater attention to popular mobilization and the importance of
peasant and worker movements. While many of these works note that
nationalist leaders focused on local grievances and manipulated
indigenous symbols and traditions to appeal to mass audiences, most
perpetuate the top-down perspective of their predecessors.11 According
to this view, the masses were but recipients of the nationalist
message. They were mobilized by the elites; they were not a mobilizing
force. 7
While a number of recent studies make reference to the generation
of mass appeal, only a handful scrutinize the actual mechanisms of
popular mobilization. Gail Minault and Sandria Freitag examine the ways
in which Indian Muslim leaders used religious and cultural symbols and
events to unite a heterogeneous Muslim population, mobilizing the
literate classes through the vernacular press, leaflets, pamphlets, and
poetry, and the nonliterate masses through speeches, slogans, songs,
religious processions, and demonstrations.12 Peter van der Veer has
made similar claims for mobilization among Indian Hindus as well as
Muslims, while James Gelvin has investigated these issues in Syria, and
Nels Johnson and Ted Swedenburg in Palestine.13 Some of the most
insightful work in this area has focused not on anticolonial
nationalism, but on internal cultural resurgence in multiethnic,
postcolonial nation-states. Pamela Price, for instance, argues in her
investigation of Tamil nationalism in India that the Federation for the
Progress of Dravidians "developed a new cosmology, a vision of a new
society and polity, which was deeply immersed in Tamil images and
themes." Its appeal resonated more strongly among the Tamil population
"than the more secular, pan-Indian message of Nehru or the ascetic
image of Gandhi."14 8
While the majority of recent studies continue to treat
nationalist mobilization as a one-way street, there are striking
exceptions to this trend. Israel Gershoni points out that most works
that focus on the dissemination of nationalist ideas from elites to
women and "subaltern socioeconomic strata such as the lower middle
classes, the working classes, and various levels of the peasantry" tell
us very little about the receptivity of these groups to nationalist
ideas. We remain ignorant of "the modes in which women, the poor, and
the illiterate?constituting the overwhelming majority of the societies
in question?reacted to the radicalized upper middle stratum's struggle
against the Westernized `ancien régime.'" Gershoni argues that future
studies "must encompass the strains of nationalism from below
percolating upward as a supplement to the research on [educated urban
elite]-driven nationalism trickling downward."15 9
The nationalist historiography of Africa, like that of Asia, has
changed dramatically in recent years. Since the early 1950s, scholars
of Africa have investigated nationalist movements and nation-building
endeavors that were both heir to the European revolutionary and liberal
traditions of 1789 and 1848 and the product of indigenous grassroots
movements.16 The earliest studies emphasized the leadership role of
Western-educated elites who organized political movements grounded in
Western concepts of democracy and national self-determination. To be
successful, these movements had to be able to generate mass support,
which they did by mobilizing around preexisting grievances and
promising to resolve them through the attainment of national
independence.17 While acknowledging the critical nature of mass
involvement, pioneers in this field, like their counterparts in Asia,
generally focused on the political leadership.18 10
In the late 1960s, as social history gained prominence in the
discipline, scholars of African nationalism began to shift their focus
to "the role of ordinary ... Africans." John Lonsdale, an eminent
member of this group, argued that "scholarly preoccupation with élites
will only partially illumine the mainsprings of nationalism."19 He
claimed that "the pressures of the peasantry at the periphery were at
least as important in breaking down the colonial governments' morale as
the demands of the élite at the centre."20 In the post?World War II
era, increased government intrusion into the lives of ordinary Africans
"resulted in a national revolution coalescing from below, co-ordinated
rather than instigated by the educated élite." According to Lonsdale,
it was the grassroots that "provided much of [the nationalist
movement's] dynamism and direction."21 11
It was left for later generations to show how "ordinary Africans"
accomplished this spectacular feat. In her pathbreaking work on
nationalism in colonial Tanzania, Susan Geiger focused on the role of
nonliterate women. She argued that these women did not "learn
nationalism" from the Western-educated male elites who dominated party
politics. Instead, women without formal education brought to the party
"an ethos of nationalism already present as trans-ethnic, trans-tribal
social and cultural identity. This ethos was expressed collectively in
their dance and other organizations, and reflected in their families of
origin as well as in marriages that frequently crossed ethnic
divisions."22 Such women were "a major force in constructing,
embodying, and performing Tanzanian nationalism."23 Thus, Tanzanian
women were a driving force behind a movement in which African and
European ideas interacted to form a new synthesis, one that was
uniquely suited to the African context. Geiger's work on Tanzanian
women inspires similar questions about the role of other grassroots
actors. What part did military veterans, urban workers, and rural
agriculturalists play in shaping nationalist movements from the bottom
up? 12
The importance of mass mobilization to the Guinean nationalist
endeavor has been noted by several scholars. However, few have examined
the popular aspects of the movement in detail. Ruth Schachter
Morgenthau, Jean Suret-Canale, Claude Rivière, Victor Du Bois, and L.
Gray Cowan have commented on the popular foundations of the Guinean
RDA, but their primary focus has been on colonial reforms, electoral
politics, and male party leaders. Their works do not explore the
mechanisms by which people were mobilized or the ways in which the rank
and file influenced party methods and programs.24 Guinean historian
Sidiki Kobélé Kéïta has written the most comprehensive, if largely
uncritical, account of the Guinean nationalist movement. His two-volume
study devotes considerable attention to elite electoral politics, and
some to the movement's popular roots. However, the specific tactics of
mass mobilization are not scrutinized. The central role of women is
mentioned, but the dynamics of their participation are not explored in
depth. 25 Although some other works remark upon the crucial nature of
women's involvement, few offer an analysis of women's motivations,
methods, and visions of a transformed society or discuss their role in
shaping the nationalist movement and defining the terms of the debate.
26 A notable exception is Idiatou Camara's unpublished undergraduate
thesis, which demonstrates the ways in which urban women helped to
construct Guinea's nationalist movement and were critical to its
success. Unfortunately, this unique work, preserved in Guinea's
national archives, is available only in that country.27 13
If the focus on popular mobilization is one trend in recent
nationalist scholarship, criticism of the negative qualities of
nationalism is another. In the 1950s and 1960s, nationalism in Africa
and Asia was associated positively with anticolonialism and popular
liberation.28 A generation later, however, following the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, and internal
struggles in a number of African and Asian countries, nationalism
acquired a highly negative connotation. Ethnic chauvinism and
ethnically motivated atrocities overwhelmed the positive
characteristics associated with earlier nationalist movements.
Increasingly, nationalism was deemed a negative force, promoting
ethnic, linguistic, and religious homogeneity, brutally excluding?or
eliminating?those considered outsiders.29 These illiberal,
counterrevolutionary forces had much in common with the right-wing
nationalisms of Europe in the "Age of Empire" (1880?1914), when, in the
words of E. J. Hobsbawm, "ethnicity and language became the central ...
or even the only criteria of potential nationhood." In the case of
Europe, and later Africa and Asia, "a concept associated with
liberalism and the left [mutated] into a chauvinist, imperialist and
xenophobic movement of the right, or more precisely, the radical right."
30 In Guinea, the RDA was forced to confront these narrow, ethnically
exclusive tendencies, both within its own ranks and in those of the
ethnic associations promoted by the colonial government and its African
supporters. 14
Nationalism thus remains a hotly debated topic with undeniable
relevance to the contemporary world. We revisit the case of Guinea, a
small West African nation that won its independence from France in
1958, because its local lessons enhance our understanding of global
trends. While earlier studies have reevaluated particular aspects of
the African nationalist experience, none has attempted to integrate
these parts into a fully reconceptualized whole. Building upon these
works, this article elaborates a new framework in which to consider the
nationalist movement of postwar Guinea. It raises theoretical and
methodological issues that fundamentally alter the way in which we
understand anticolonial nationalism in the non-Western world. 15
An examination of the Guinean case leads to three theoretical
conclusions. First, anticolonial nationalism, in many instances,
embraces heterogeneous populations that are ethnically and religiously
diverse. As such, it belongs to a progressive political tradition that
one might call "inclusive nationalism."31 Second, while anticolonial
nationalist movements have been led by educated elites, often inspired
by European ideals, elites did not instigate the anticolonial protests.
Rather, they built their base among popular groups already engaged in
struggle against the colonial state. They identified issues around
which the masses were already mobilizing and incorporated them into the
nationalist agenda. These agendas were successful largely because they
were deeply rooted in mass concerns, rather than imposed from above or
outside. Third, conceptualizing the nation was a two-way street. Masses
as well as elites had an impact on the ideas, objectives, strategies,
and methods of the nationalist leaders. While elites brought European
ideas and models of nationalism to the table, the nonliterate majority
brought others that were embedded in indigenous histories, practices,
and beliefs.32 16
Finally, an assessment of the Guinean case leads to an important
observation about mobilizing methods. It shows us how people were
mobilized?the mechanisms and processes by which mass mobilization
occurred. While some indigenous cultural practices and images were co-
opted by elites and presented to the populace, the people themselves
brought others to the movement. Again, we see that the masses were not
simply an "audience" for elite-inspired nationalism, nor the
"transmitters" of a message formulated for them.33 The songs and
slogans employed by nonliterate people to communicate the nationalist
message were not composed by party leaders on their behalf. Rather,
people without formal education created these devices to communicate
among themselves, to transmit their own messages to the elites, and to
interpret elite messages in terms meaningful to themselves. 17
The postwar Guinean movement, spearheaded by the RDA, was not
only vehemently anticolonial, but also nationalist and inclusive. It
was the conscious struggle to bridge ethnic, class, and gender
differences that made the Guinean movement so effective and placed it
squarely in the progressive political tradition of the European
revolutionary era (1789?1848).34 Much of the Guinean population shared
a precolonial history. A large proportion shared a religion. All had
mutually understood experiences and grievances resulting from French
colonialism. Together, these formed a common basis that allowed a
nation to be forged from a multilingual, ethnically heterogeneous
population. 18
While the movement's leadership was composed of Western-educated
elites whose views of democracy and national self-determination were
derived largely from European models, its strength lay in its solid
support among peasants, workers, veterans, and women. The Guinean
nationalist movement was successful because it built its base among
these groups, which were already engaged in anticolonial protest. It
was their grievances that drove the nationalist agenda and their
energies that were harnessed in the struggle for national independence.
35 19
If grassroots activists shaped Guinea's nationalist agenda, they
also influenced its form. Indigenous cultural practices were adapted?by
elites and nonelites alike?to transmit the new nationalist message.
While print media contributed to the spread of nationalist ideas in
nineteenth-century Europe, books and newspapers were less significant
in Guinea, where mass education had yet to be realized. Mobilizing the
largely nonliterate population required new methods of communication,
notably songs, symbols, and uniforms. The majority of songs were
composed by nonliterate women, who sang their nationalist message at
public water taps, taxi stands, and marketplaces.36 Symbols and
uniforms also had popular origins that spoke to mass sentiments and
were integral to grassroots organizing efforts. 20
If nationalist historiography has undergone a major transformation, so,
too, has the meaning of "the nation." In 1882, the French philosopher
Ernest Renan contested the nineteenth-century German romantic notion of
the nation as a primordial, ethnically and culturally bound entity. The
nation is not based upon race, ethnicity, language, or religion, he
wrote, but rather on a shared past and a vision of a common future.37
More than a century later, Miroslav Hroch built upon these ideas,
arguing that the nation is not an "eternal category, but ... the
product of a long and complicated process of historical development"
that cannot be reduced to an ethnicity or language group. Rather, Hroch
claims, the nation is "a large social group integrated not by one but
by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships (economic,
political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, historical),
and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness."38
Similarly, Benedict Anderson describes the nation as "an imagined
political community" that is sovereign and contained within defined
territorial boundaries. The community is "imagined" because most of its
members are strangers to one another, yet they consider themselves
bound together in emotional solidarity as well as in a sovereign
political entity.39 21
According to these definitions of "the nation," broader and more
nuanced than some that had previously prevailed, Guinea in the postwar
period was unquestionably a nation-in-the-making. More than any other
Guinean party, the RDA consciously and successfully shaped a national
rather than an ethnic identity.40 Although characterized by its
opponents as a party of Malinke and Susu with strong anti-Peul
undercurrents, the Guinean RDA prided itself on its multiethnic
membership and its particular appeal to the lower classes of all ethnic
groups. The party's allure for Néné Diallo is a case in point. A low-
status cloth-dyer, Diallo was among the first Peul women to join the
RDA. "The RDA welcomed everyone," she claimed. "It treated everyone
like family. It did not discriminate against the downtrodden or the
poor." While many of her family members joined opposing parties such as
the Bloc Africain de Guinée and Démocratie Socialiste de Guinée, both
of which were led by Peul notables, Diallo was adamant in her support
for the RDA. Likening members of her ethnic group to family, Diallo
contended,
It all depended upon who helped me. The other ones did nothing for me
... Diawadou [leader of the Bloc Africain de Guinée] is my kin. Barry
III [leader of the Démocratie Socialiste de Guinée] is my kin ... Even
if they were my mother, I would not support them ... Sékou worked for
us. Allah and his Envoy are my witness. He told us he had no material
things to offer, but he stood up for us and respected us. That is why
we followed him ... Although Sékou did not give us anything, he cared
for us.41 22
To build an inclusive nation, the Guinean RDA, under the
leadership of Western-educated elites, constructed a broad ethnic,
class, and gender alliance that was heir to a long European, and
particularly French, tradition. With its emphasis on individual rights
and liberties and government by the governed, it was, in part, a
product of the European Enlightenment. As a mass movement for "the self-
determination of peoples," popular sovereignty, and citizenship, led by
an aspiring intellectual elite against an oppressive, hierarchical
state, it was also an outgrowth of the French Revolution and influenced
by subsequent European nationalist movements.42 Rather than rejecting
the modern nation-state as an alien institution imposed on African
society by colonial rule, nationalist leaders charged that the state
had failed because its work was incomplete. The colonial state was, in
Partha Chatterjee's words, "restricting and even violating the true
principles of modern government" by denying inalienable rights to
colonized peoples.43 23
The presence of European ideas in African political thought was a
product of French colonialism?the unintended outcome of French
assimilationist policies. When Guinea was colonized in 1891, the
colonial administration, along with its missionary assistants, embarked
upon a self-described "civilizing mission" with the goal of
transforming an elite corps of Africans into "Black Frenchmen." This
small group of assimilated Africans, or évolués, would serve as
intermediaries between the government and the populace and work in
European-owned enterprises. With a strong emphasis on "practical"
education, especially in the poorly funded, lower-echelon rural
schools, the African curriculum was designed to be devoid of subjects
that might develop thought and hone analytical skills. However, some
European ideas infiltrated the curriculum, as colonial educators
denigrated African cultures, deplored African customs, and ignored
African history?in favor of that which was French.44 24
While many évolués embraced French civilization, some of the most
assimilated challenged French cultural hegemony with their own. As
schoolchildren, they had been prohibited from speaking their own
languages and denied the opportunity to explore their own pasts. The
most successful among them were rewarded with higher education abroad.
On the eve of World War II, an elite group of African and Caribbean
intellectuals in Paris rebelled against their growing sense of
rootlessness and alienation. Under the leadership of Léopold Senghor of
Senegal and Aimé Césaire of Martinique, they launched the Négritude
movement. While Europeans championed Western civilization as the
epitome of human achievement, practitiotioners of Négritude pointed to
the West's legacy of brutality, exploitation, and alienation. In
contrast, they posited African cultures, which, they claimed, promoted
peace, harmony, and community.45 Through poetry, essays, novels, and
plays, these cultural nationalists stressed a common African essence, a
system of shared values and beliefs that laid the foundations for
nationalist movements in the political realm.46 25
Although few Guineans achieved the educational qualifications
necessary to study in France, the ideas of Négritude reached elites in
Guinea through Senghor's literary and scholarly journal, Présence
Africaine. Published simultaneously in Dakar and Paris, the journal was
circulated among Western-educated intellectuals in Guinea.47 While the
ideas promoted by Senghor and his colleagues certainly influenced some
Guinean nationalists,48 proponents of class analysis, including Sékou
Touré and interterritorial RDA leader Gabriel d'Arboussier, rejected
the racially based theories of Négritude, claiming that they obscured
the socioeconomic roots of oppression and distracted the masses from
the class struggle.49 26
On the eve of World War II, Négritude was joined by other
critiques of colonialism that had germinated on African soil. These,
too, were influenced by European ideas. Just as African intellectuals
in France challenged the premises of assimilation, French intellectuals
in Africa defied the mandate to only partially educate their African
charges. During the Popular Front government of 1936?1938, a growing
number of French teachers pushed the boundaries of the African
curriculum, extolling the republican principles of liberty, equality,
and fraternity and championing the universal rights of man. Moving onto
terrain considered dangerous by both previous and subsequent
governments, they taught the history of the French Revolution along
with practical skills and the elements of literacy.50 27
The belief in the universal rights of man, as embodied in French
civilization, was the cornerstone of French assimilationist policies.
The 1789 "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen" promoted
radical ideas that bolstered the Guinean nationalist cause. Those
exposed to the text learned that "Men are born free and remain free and
equal in rights." In striking contrast to their experience under French
colonialism, they read that "The aim of all political association is
the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man,"
including "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression."
While their people were ruled by governmental decree, Guinean students
learned that "Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen
has a right to take part personally or through his representative in
its formation."51 Thus, the rows of African schoolchildren who
dutifully chanted, "Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois" imbibed revolutionary
lessons as well.52 Embracing the notion of French universalism, African
elites incorporated many of its tenets into their nationalist ideology.
African trade unionists and military veterans, who seized upon French
claims of universalism to demand equal treatment, were a critical
component of the Guinean nationalist movement.53 28
If the Enlightenment and the French Revolution of 1789 laid the
foundations for European nationalist endeavors, the continent-wide
revolutions of 1848 resulted in the widespread building of modern
nation-states based on liberal republican ideals. Struggling against
the tyranny of monarchs ruling over large multiethnic empires,
proponents of European nationalism supported their claims for national
independence by asserting that "no people ought to be exploited and
ruled by another." While concurring that certain fundamental features
distinguished one people from another, they contended that those
differences were not reducible to ethnic or linguistic traits.54
According to Hobsbawm, "French nationality was French citizenship:
ethnicity, history, the language or patois spoken at home, were
irrelevant to the definition of `the nation.'"55 It was assumed that
small ethnic groups would necessarily be joined into larger,
economically and politically viable territorial states. It was this
broad-based, multiethnic nationalism that took root in Guinea a century
later. In Guinea, as in France, nationality was equated with
citizenship, rather than ethnicity or language.56 29
The foundations laid by the European Enlightenment and subsequent
revolutions were built upon by French Communists. Because their
opposition to imperialism resonated strongly with African
intellectuals, members of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) had a
tremendous influence on African elites educated during the 1930s and
1940s.57 Since the establishment of the Popular Front government in
1936, French Communists had worked in French West and Equatorial Africa
as teachers, technicians, and military officers. They had taught at the
prestigious federal school École Normale William Ponty in Senegal, and
at the upper primary and vocational schools in Conakry and other major
cities.58 They had helped to establish a number of Groupes d'études
Communistes (GECs), where African intellectuals studied Marxist-
Leninist theories and applied them to the political, economic, and
social conditions of their own territories.59 Leadership and
organizational training were also provided by the Communist-affiliated
trade union movement, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT).60
Numerous RDA stalwarts, including Sékou Touré, emerged from the GEC/CGT
milieu, which deeply influenced their organizing skills, strategies,
and ideology.61 They consciously modeled the RDA's structure and
orientation on those of the PCF.62 It was to French Communists, as much
as to nineteenth-century nationalists, that the RDA owed the notion of
a broad-based nationalist alliance forged from a heterogeneous,
sometimes divided, population. 30
The construction of an inclusive nationalist alliance was the product
of struggle. Guinea in the 1950s was anything but a homogeneous
society. It was multilingual and multiethnic and included people of
diverse religious backgrounds. Despite the nation-building efforts of
party leaders, the battle to forge an ethnic, class, and gender
alliance was fraught with tensions and marred by setbacks. Female
emancipation, regional and ethnic inclusiveness, and the growing role
of Western-educated elites were heavily contested at the grassroots.
While RDA leaders remained deeply committed to inclusive nation-
building, they struggled to convince the swelling grassroots membership
on this point.63 While tensions sometimes percolated to the surface,
there existed in Guinea what Karl Deutsch calls a "wide complementarity
of social communication," which allowed Guineans to "communicate more
effectively" among themselves than with others who might speak the same
languages and belong to the same ethnic groups.64 31
The "complementarity of social communication" in Guinea was
predicated on the territory's shared history. Parts of Guinea had been
incorporated into multiethnic political, economic, religious, and
cultural systems long before European conquest. For centuries, Malinke
trading networks and their associated Muslim communities had connected
diverse parts of what would become modern Guinea. Jallonke (Susu,
Limba, Landuma, Baga, Bassari) and Fulbe (Peul and Tukulor) residents
of the Futa Jallon traded extensively with coastal peoples.65 In the
eighteenth century, the Fulbe jihads brought the Futa Jallon under
unified political and religious control.66 In the nineteenth century,
the politico-religious empires of the Tukulor leader, El-Hadj Umar b.
Said Tall, and the Malinke leader, Samori Touré, brought together vast
expanses of territory that included much of modern Guinea and its
neighbors.67 Many Guineans had, in Hobsbawm's words, "the consciousness
of ... having belonged to a lasting political entity."68 This legacy of
political, economic, religious, and cultural interaction linked
Guineans to one another and to peoples in neighboring territories.69
32
Precolonial African political leaders, particularly those who had
resisted French conquest, were championed by the postwar nationalist
movement?their subjugation and enslavement of African peoples
minimized, if not erased from historical memory.70 Samori Touré was
particularly revered for his seventeen-year conflict with the French,
which had staved off colonial rule for nearly two decades.71 To
Guineans during the nationalist period, Samori was promoted not as a
Malinke leader, but as a common ancestor who belonged to all Guineans.
72 33
The Guinean RDA skillfully used the history of resistance to
colonial conquest to rally people to the leadership of its secretary-
general, Sékou Touré, a great-grandson of Samori Touré, and to inspire
renewed resistance to colonial rule.73 Making a veiled reference to
Samori's enslavement of conquered peoples, the RDA noted, "If Samory
Touré can make you slaves, Sékou Touré can make you free."74 The party
also promoted other historic resisters, consciously selecting
representatives from Guinea's major regions and ethnic groups.75 Among
the most prominent were rival Peul politico-religious leaders from the
Futa Jallon, Almamy Bokar Biro Barry of Timbo and Chief Alfa Yaya
Diallo of Labé; N'Zébéla Togba Pivi, a Loma war chief from the forest
region; and Cerno Aliou, the Wali of Gumba, a Peul religious leader
whose egalitarian Islamic movement attracted the lower classes and was
crushed by the colonial administration.76 34
If a common past was one unifying factor in Guinea, shared
religion?at least by a substantial majority?was another. Nearly three-
quarters of the Guinean population was Muslim, while a significant
minority was Christian.77 Christian missionaries had attracted some
converts among the Baga (subsequently incorporated into the Susu) in
the coastal areas. They had had some success in the forest region,
which, apart from Malinke trading communities, Islam had failed to
penetrate. However, they had made little headway among devout Muslims
in Upper Guinea and the Futa Jallon. Other Christians in Guinea
included civil servants from diverse parts of the French empire, along
with their descendants. Apart from Muslims and Christians, a minority
of the population, particularly in the coastal and forest regions,
continued to practice indigenous religions.78 35
Despite the fact that the colonizers were largely Christian, the
nationalist movement did not assume an anti-Christian fervor. Rather
than lashing out at Christian infidels, RDA leaders, like others in
Africa and Asia, stressed the positive attributes of Islam and their
compatibility with the nationalist program.79 An article in the Guinean
RDA newspaper, La Liberté, noted "the total identity of the RDA's
programme of emancipation with the liberating principles of justice and
hope in Islam."80 A regular attendee at Friday religious services,
Sékou Touré frequented a different mosque each week, widely publicizing
his relationship with Islam. During Friday prayers, worshipers were
reminded of the commonalities between adherents of Islam and the RDA.
Prayers such as the following drew parallels between the struggles of
the two communities:
God is great
It is hard
To bring unbelievers
Into the brotherhood of believers
But we need the die-hards
To spur us on.
Verses from the first chapter of the Qurn (the fatiha) were commonly
recited at RDA meetings and for workers during highly politicized
strikes. 81 Islamic practices?including Qurnic readings, the daily
regimen of prayers, and religious festivals and holy days?provided the
common symbols, rituals, and collective practices that, in Hobsbawm's
words, gave "a palpable reality to otherwise imaginary community." 82
36
If some of these practices were initiated by RDA leaders, others
clearly emanated from the grassroots. In a manuscript based largely on
interviews with female militants, Idiatou Camara notes that at baptisms
and other gatherings, RDA women recited verses from the fatiha to
"curse the traitors of the fatherland" and to bind loyalists to the
party. Whenever a member of a rival party was converted to the RDA, he
or she ate the "bread of fatiha," over which those assembled had
intoned Qurnic verses "to express their firm conviction and faith in
the RDA." 83 37
The close association of Sékou Touré's work with Allah's Will was
another politico-religious practice of local origin. Grassroots
activists readily linked the names of Sékou Touré, Allah, and Mohammed.
Recalling the day she was recruited into the RDA, Aissatou N'Diaye
reminisced that she and Mafory Bangoura had been called to a meeting
with Sékou Touré:
Upon our arrival, he asked us to help him mobilize women ... He also
said that he had nothing material, not money or gold, to offer in
return. If the women would help him, they would do it for the love of
Allah, his Envoy, and their cause ... He asked us to do this work in
the name of Allah and his Prophet, Mohammed.84
Similarly, police reports describe groups of RDA members crisscrossing
the capital city, "singing praises to the Blessed of Allah, Sékou
Touré."85 In one song, women beseeched Allah to bless Sékou Touré,
"savior of the orphans and the Muslims."86 In another, party members
proclaimed that both God and his Prophet favored the elephant?the
emblem of both Sékou Touré and the RDA:
God wants the elephant
Muhammad the Prophet wants the elephant
You went to Paris
You returned from Paris
Your face shows
That even the people of Paris
Want the elephant.87
At the funeral of M'Balia Camara, the RDA's first woman martyr, party
officials were followed by a procession of men, women, and children
singing RDA songs and chanting verses of the Qurn mingled with the name
of Sékou Touré. 88 38
If Islam was a binding force, so too were pre-Islamic religious
practices. Grassroots activists, rather than party leaders, first
associated indigenous religious beliefs and symbols with the
nationalist cause. 89 Numerous accounts link the RDA to Bassikolo, a
spirit represented by a sacred tree in the Conakry neighborhood of
Tumbo. Revered as the guardian of women and children, Bassikolo was
believed to grant them wishes, to protect them from illness, and to
ensure women's fertility. Just as some women read from the Qurn to
convene RDA and trade union meetings, others began by asking for
Bassikolo's assistance. They also sought his help during electoral
campaigns, beseeching him to aid in the party's triumph. 90 After
sweeping electoral victories in 1956, for instance, the RDA
neighborhood committee in Tumbo organized a dance in Bassikolo's honor.
Before a crowd of some two thousand people, speakers thanked the spirit
for helping the party realize its electoral goals and requested his
continued assistance in the future. 91 39
According to Fatou Khimely, women who invoked Bassikolo
customarily assumed male garb and social roles. To call forth the
spirit for the new political endeavor, women also "wore trousers and
cursed the enemies of the RDA."92 Women's assumption of male clothing
and gender roles in times of crisis was rooted in precolonial cultural
practices. In the forest region, for instance, women historically took
collective action against men who abused their wives and failed to mend
their ways. Dressed as male warriors and armed with sharp knives they
called "penis cutters," women surrounded the offending parties' homes.
While the women pounded on the buildings with clubs, no man dared to
show his face.93 This precolonial gender practice, and its extension to
the political realm under colonial rule, bears a striking resemblance
to that of Igbo women in southeastern Nigeria, where, Judith Van Allen
notes, "making war" or "sitting on a man" was women's "ultimate
sanction."94 40
If many Guineans shared a precolonial history and religious and
cultural practices, all were bound by the common history of French
colonialism. Even before Guinea's colonization, Renan recognized that
"suffering in common unifies more than joy does." He noted that shared
grievances are the critical constituent of national memories because
"they impose duties, and require a common effort." In fact, he claimed,
a nation is "a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of
the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is
prepared to make in the future."95 41
Despite Renan's prescient words, French officials failed to
recognize the uniunifying power of shared suffering under colonialism.
To the government, "Guinea" was merely an "administrative unit," with
no natural claim to nation-statehood.96 From the perspective of
ethnicity, linguistics, and geography, its borders were arbitrary.
Historically, the logic of its boundaries corresponded with nothing
more than the extent of imperial conquest and "effective occupation,"
legitimized by the General Act of the 1884?1885 Berlin Conference.97
However, Hobsbawm writes, "The unity imposed by conquest and
administration might ... produce a people that saw itself as a
`nation.'"98 Such was the case in Guinea. 42
The people of Guinea experienced French colonialism as Guineans?
not as Malinkes, Susus, or Peuls. They were subjected to taxation,
forced labor, military conscription, and the arbitrary "justice" of the
indigénat as Africans, not as members of particular ethnic groups.99 As
Guineans, they participated in the same political and economic systems,
within geographic boundaries created by the colonial power. Despite
their variety in language and ethnicity, they shared symbols, memories,
and historical experiences that permitted them to communicate more
effectively with other Guineans than with outsiders. Increasingly
during the 1950s, this shared experience was reflected in their
collective consciousness of themselves as Guineans.100 43
The Guinean RDA was by no means the only postwar African movement
to promote national over regional and ethnic identity and to root
national identity in shared suffering under colonialism. However, it
was among the first. Kevin Dunn's observations concerning the
nationalist ideology of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba are apt for
the Guinean RDA, which led Guinea to independence nearly two years
before the Congo achieved its own. Influenced by the anticolonial,
nationalist, and Pan-African ideas that prevailed at the All-African
People's Conference convened by Sékou Touré, Kwame Nkrumah, and others
in December 1958, Lumumba emphasized national over ethnic and regional
identity, accepting "the colonially constructed space of the Congo" as
the basis of an independent nation-state.101 While his rivals
"privileged smaller, fragmented spaces bound by ethnicity, language, or
regional memories, Lumumba tied Congolese identity to the larger
colonially demarcated space of the Congo." In an effort to create a
unified identity for people of diverse ethnic origins from all parts of
the territory, Lumumba "ground[ed] Congolese identity in the collective
social memories of suffering at the hands of Belgian colonizers."102 In
Guinea, the RDA had promoted a similar inclusive nationalist
philosophy. 44
If the shared history of the Guinean people was rooted in the
precolonial past and strengthened by the common experience of
colonialism, the identity of Guinea as a nation was still developing in
the late colonial period. France, like other colonial powers,
maintained control through policies of divide and rule. Existent social
cleavages were reinforced, and new ones created, through colonial
policies. Layers of African intermediaries?government-appointed chiefs,
colonial soldiers, and police?became the focal point of popular anger,
diverting attention from the Europeans at the reins of power. It was
the task of Guinea's nationalist leaders to shift the focus and
demonstrate common cause.103 45
Although Guinea had the makings of a nation-state, the postwar
anticolonial movement was not automatically a nationalist one. Rather,
it was consciously molded as such. Nation-building was a long, arduous
process that began during the anticolonial struggle and continued after
political independence. According to John Breuilly, "the nation" was
not only "a body of citizens claiming independence on the basis of
universal human rights," it was also "a project, a unity to be
fashioned out of the fight for independence and in the new era of
freedom."104 It was the conscious struggle to bridge ethnic, class, and
gender divisions?and the ultimate success of that endeavor?that made
the nationalist movement in Guinea so extraordinary. 46
Who were the actors in this remarkable movement of masses and elites?
Guinea's nationalist leaders, who articulated the broad-based
progressive nationalism of revolutionary Europe, were the product of
French assimilation policies, as well as a colonial educational system
that was limited in both scope and substance. Graduates of programs
designed to create an elite cadre?rather than a mass?of "Black
Frenchmen," they belonged to a select, almost exclusively male,
fraternity. While most went no further than primary school in their
home regions, those who progressed to more advanced schooling in the
capital found peers of diverse ethnic origins from across the
territory. As new friendships were cemented through the new vernacular
(French), ethnic barriers were weakened and cast aside. These new
Western-educated elites increasingly thought of themselves as Guinean,
rather than Malinke, Susu, or Peul.105 47
In postwar Guinea, formal education remained the luxury of a few,
and that education was rudimentary. There was no schooling beyond lower
primary (sixth grade) in most parts of the country, and no education
beyond upper primary (ninth grade) anywhere in the territory. The
largest administrative districts were equipped with lower primary
schools (écoles primaires élémentaires), which provided a maximum of
six years of schooling to those who could afford it. Possession of a
lower primary school certificate, certificat d'études primaires
élémentaires (CEP), was sufficient for employment in the cadre
subalterne, the lowest rung of the French civil service. Another three
years of education were provided by the upper primary school (école
primaire supérieure [EPS]) in the capital city. EPS graduates joined
the middle-level government cadres (cadres moyens or cadres locaux). At
the end of World War II, Guinea possessed only one upper primary school
and one vocational school, both in Conakry. In 1945, with a population
of just over two million, Guinea had only 7,900 pupils in upper and
lower primary and vocational schools. Of the total, 7,417 were in the
lower primary grades, and only 606 of these were girls.106 Thus, at the
end of World War II, the number of Guinean évolués was minuscule?and
virtually all of them were male. 48
Students seeking education beyond the primary grades had to leave
Guinea. Each year, a small number of EPS graduates won the right to
attend one of the highly selective federal schools, which drew the best
and the brightest from all the territories of French West Africa. The
most prestigious of the federal schools was the école Normale William
Ponty, located near Dakar, Senegal.107 Ponty students were trained to
be teachers, assistant doctors, and assistant pharmacists, and for
other civil service posts in the cadre commun secondaire. Although they
constituted the elite among African civil servants, Ponty graduates
could never rise to the top of the civil service system. Their diplomas
had no equivalence outside French West Africa. Thus, they could not
accede to the cadre supérieur, reserved for those with French diplomas.
108 With its relatively undeveloped educational system, postwar Guinea
boasted very few Ponty graduates. In 1948, for instance, only eleven
new Guinean students were admitted to the school.109 49
Given the paucity of private investment, discrimination by
European-owned enterprises, and obligations stemming from state-
subsidized studies, most Western-educated Africans joined the colonial
bureaucracy. They served in a wide range of civil service positions, as
teachers, clerks, and accountants; postal, telegraph, and telephone
workers; and assistant doctors, pharmacists, and veterinarians.110
Because they were invested in the colonial system?and risked their
livelihoods if they contested state policies?many civil servants,
especially those in the highest ranks, joined officially sanctioned
regional and ethnic parties and supported government directives. Most
Ponty graduates fell within this category.111 Hence, Morgenthau notes,
Guinean RDA leaders frequently "accused the Ponty graduates of
betraying the masses, and called them the valets of the administration."
112 50
The relatively privileged position of federal school graduates in
the colonial system was one reason that they were generally hostile to
the RDA. Class snobbery was another. Many considered the Guinean RDA
leader, Sékou Touré, to be beneath them. 113 Sékou Touré had attended
Qurnic school, lower primary school, and the vocational school in
Conakry. When he entered the civil service, he became a postal clerk.
Continuing his studies by correspondence, he ultimately qualified to
work as an accountant in the Treasury. 114 Despite his comparatively
advanced level of education, Sékou Touré was derided by his more
credentialed rivals as an "illiterate," or at most a man with "a sixth-
grade education." Even among his supporters, there was sometimes a note
of disdain. A Peul aristocrat, Ponty graduate, and teacher, Bocar Biro
Barry was unusual in his support for the RDA. 115 When he discussed
Sékou Touré, however, his assessment was tinged with elitism: "Sékou
was practically illiterate. He only had the CEP ... [His rivals] said,
`Sékou, who is that? That's an illiterate. He doesn't know anything.'
Because, effectively, he was self-taught. You know, as a diploma, he
only had the certificat d'études [primaires élémentaires]." 116 51
Although some Ponty graduates joined the RDA, most Guinean RDA
leaders were the product of lower state schools. Equipped with only
primary school certificates, they staffed the lower echelons of the
colonial bureaucracy. Accorded a modicum of privilege that
distinguished them from the nonliterate masses, but not enough to
render them equal to Frenchmen, this class of intended collaborators
grew increasingly frustrated by their unequal treatment and inability
to rise above the lowest ranks of government service.117 Commenting on
the uncertain loyalty of these lower-level elites, the governor of
Guinea observed, "The most dubious elements are found among the semi-
évolués, who sometimes have a fault-finding, duplicitous attitude, and
who are on the lookout for any occasion to criticize and make demands."
118 It was these angry intellectuals who first agitated for a greater
voice in political affairs and then spearheaded opposition to colonial
rule. 52
If elites are the first to imagine a nation, they cannot make their
vision a reality without the support of a mass movement. The
nationalist program, by its very nature, requires an alliance of
divergent interests?an "imagined community" of comrades that masks any
exploitation and inequality within it.119 In Guinea, the RDA's success
was due to its ability to form a formidable ethnic, class, and gender
alliance. It was this broad-based alliance that made the Guinean RDA a
mass movement and permitted it to trump rivals that were constrained by
their narrow ethnic, regional, and elite male focus. 53
While the nationalist movement in Guinea was led by intellectual
elites with their own vision of "the nation," it was first and foremost
a movement of the masses?of peasants, workers, veterans, and women. The
RDA did not introduce these actors to politics. Rather, during World
War II and its aftermath, these groups instigated a panoply of
anticolonial actions. Here I take issue with Breuilly, who contends
that nationalist leaders generally "forge links with large parts of the
population hitherto uninvolved in politics," and Tom Nairn, who asserts
that the emergence of modern nationalism "was tied to the political
baptism of the lower classes."120 I argue instead that the Guinean RDA
targeted social groups already engaged in struggle against the colonial
state: military veterans and urban workers fighting for equality with
their metropolitan counterparts; male and female peasants burdened by
the war effort and the demands of government-appointed chiefs; and
urban women unable to provide for their families during the postwar
economic crisis. Embracing the particular causes of these social
groups, the RDA harnessed their energies and enticed them into the
broader nationalist movement.121 54
Key to the RDA's success was its focus on groups that had already
mobilized themselves. It forged an unlikely alliance through consistent
focus on areas of common interest determined by the groups involved:
forced labor in the rural areas; abuses by government-appointed chiefs;
racial discrimination in wages, benefits, and social services; and the
promotion of health, sanitation, and educational programs and
facilities. While other political parties concentrated on so-called
"traditional" elites?chiefs, notables, and their allies?the RDA
consciously focused on the majority of the population, polling their
grievances and channeling their discontent. 55
In the case of labor, active opposition to state demands began
during the war, when thousands of forced laborers resisted the
impositions of the war effort by deserting their workplaces.122 When
forced labor was officially abolished in April 1946, tens of thousands
of rural workers vacated their stations en masse. Official records
reveal an extraordinary picture of labor unrest throughout the
territory.123 This rural-based labor activity predated the trade union
organizing that swept the urban areas in the late 1940s and early
1950s. While they focused on the urban rather than the rural areas,
trade unions attempted to harness the popular discontent of workers
that emanated from the grassroots. The RDA, in turn, built a powerful
base in the urban working class. 56
Likewise, it was the rural populace, rather than RDA leaders, who
initiated popular resistance to the colonial chieftaincy. Serving as
local agents of the colonial administration, canton and village chiefs
forcibly recruited labor and military conscripts, requisitioned cash
crops, and exacted onerous taxes from the rural population. They
frequently abused their powers for personal ends, extorting labor,
cash, crops, and livestock for their own use. Rural women, who were
forced to perform much of the chiefs' unpaid labor and frequently were
subjected to sexual abuse, were among the most vociferous and active
opponents of the chieftaincy. So, too, were returning military
veterans. Forcibly conscripted from the rural areas, these men had
suffered devastating wartime experiences and postwar deprivations.
Inspired by anti-fascist and anti-Nazi rhetoric, angered by their
unequal treatment in comparison to their French counterparts, many
veterans were deeply resentful of colonial authorities?be they European
or African.124 57
For the most part, colonial chiefs staunchly opposed the RDA,
which seriously undermined their power base. With significant coercive
powers at the local level, they were the primary obstacle to RDA
expansion in the rural areas. Capitalizing on preexisting rural
sentiment, the RDA helped to articulate grievances against the chiefs
and coordinate the spontaneous actions of the population. Although it
was the RDA, within the framework of limited self-government, that
abolished the institution of the chieftaincy in 1957, it was a decade-
long popular revolt that made that action possible.125 Had the
institution survived, the referendum that brought national independence
in 1958 might well have had a different outcome.126 58
The first Guinean leaders to understand the importance of mass
politics and the necessity of building a popular base were not the
Ponty-educated intellectuals. Rather, they were trade union leaders,
whose lives were closely linked to those of the nonliterate masses. Few
of these men had advanced beyond lower primary or technical school.
Even fewer had had opportunities to study outside of Guinea. The most
prescient of these leaders was Sékou Touré. In 1945, Sékou Touré, then
a young postal clerk, helped to establish a trade union for African
postal, telegraph, and telephone workers.127 The following year, he
organized the Union des Syndicats Confédérés de Guinée, which brought
together all the Guinean affiliates of the French Communist Party?
linked CGT. The CGT unions united workers of various ethnicities and
civil service rankings, as well as previously neglected "auxiliaries,"
who had no permanent civil service status.128 In 1948, Sékou Touré
toured the territory, making contact with skilled and unskilled workers
and Western-educated civil servants. He instigated the establishment of
CGT branches in most of the major administrative districts.129 By 1952,
the Guinean CGT boasted some three thousand members in twenty
affiliated unions.130 59
While the CGT unions included Western-educated civil servants,
they were dominated numerically by nonliterate workers. It was the deep
involvement of Sékou Touré with the latter that distinguished him from
many of his peers. According to Bocar Biro Barry, Sékou Touré "created
his trade union from the illiterates." He organized domestic servants,
dock workers, laundrymen, and orderlies. Gradually, he added low-level
government clerks. The CGT unions, in turn, served as the base for his
political organizing. According to Barry,
It was in this way that he created his trade union. It was in this way
that he created his party. He found the elements of his party through
the trade union?because the party was created from domestic servants,
dock workers, and orderlies ... He first put himself at the level of
the lowliest people in order to try to climb ... He was much smarter
than [his opponents]. He began with nothing. He said, "We are the poor.
I am with the poor. The teachers, they are bourgeois. The doctors, they
are bourgeois. They are the big intellectuals. They speak a language
that you don't understand. I come, we speak in Susu. We speak in
Maninka. We understand one another." This is how, little by little, he
won the little man of the streets. He launched his party from his trade
union.131
The Guinean RDA, like the CGT, was built from a mass base. Despite
periodic internal struggles stemming from conflicting interests brought
together in a single alliance, the party remained united throughout the
preindependence period. 60
Although the masses were rallied to the nationalist cause by
intellectual elites, the process was not unidirectional. Masses as well
as elites conceptualized and mobilized the nation. Nairn is correct in
his claim that common people were "the ultimate recipients of the new
message"?and responsible for much of its content.132 Their languages
had to be spoken, their cultural forms respected, and their grievances
addressed, or intellectual appeals would fall on deaf ears. Unlike
rival parties, the Guinean RDA attained its strength by addressing
preexisting popular grievances and promoting solutions for them. Thus,
it was local-level actors who determined many of the basic claims on
the nationalist agenda. 61
Just as the concerns of the African masses influenced the demands
of the African elites, nationalist thought was transformed on African
soil. Africans did not simply import European concepts and adopt them
as their own.133 Like its European counterpart, African nationalism was
rooted in indigenous "cultural systems" that predated the nationalist
struggle.134 On both continents, indigenous "cultural and political
traditions," as well as "memories, myths, symbols and vernacular forms
of expression," were harnessed to the nationalist agenda.135 Obviously,
those in Africa differed significantly from those in Europe. 62
African models diverged from European in other ways as well.
Hobsbawm, Anderson, and Ernest Gellner stress the importance of mass
education and "print capitalism" to the success of European nationalist
movements.136 During the "Age of Revolution" (1789?1848), Europe
experienced a dramatic growth in popular education. Books and
newspapers increasingly were written in vernacular languages, rather
than foreign tongues understood by only a tiny minority.137 According
to Anderson, the widespread availability of printed material?and
people's ability to read it?"made it possible for rapidly growing
numbers of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves
to others, in profoundly new ways." These phenomena generated large
literate populations who could imagine new kinds of communities, along
with the technical means to mobilize them.138 63
Critiquing Anderson, Anne McClintock contends that "mass national
commodity spectacle," rather than print capitalism, has been modern
nationalism's driving force. Nationalism is "invented and performed"
through spectacle, she argues. It "takes shape through the visible,
ritual organization of fetish objects" such as flags, uniforms,
anthems, and mass rallies?in other words, "the myriad forms of popular
culture." It is this mass spectacle that creates "a sense of popular,
collective unity."139 64
McClintock's analysis is particularly apt for the colonized
world, where print capitalism and mass education were significantly
less important than in Europe. In the case of Guinea, party tracts and
newspapers, written exclusively in French, were not widely circulated
outside the urban areas. Yet the population was predominantly rural-
based and non-French-speaking. Moreover, the percentage of the
population that could actually read was minute?and overwhelmingly male.
Grievances, demands, and calls for popular mobilization, while
articulated in the party press, had to be carried to the masses through
other, largely aural and visual, means.140 65
Mass spectacle was a critical feature of Guinean nationalism.
Party elites and nonliterate militants constructed a vision of national
unity through enormous rallies and intensive campaigning in the rural
areas. Party slogans, symbols, uniforms, and, most importantly, song
were the critical means by which the population communicated the
anticolonial message and created an imagined political community. The
party color (white) was sported at large public rallies, which often
numbered two thousand or more. Speakers appealed to popular sentiment
through culturally rooted images, anecdotes, and parables.141 In order
to promote unity between people of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds, the Guinean RDA adopted a uniform.142 It selected as its
party symbol Syli, the powerful elephant "who does not forget," the
mighty king of the beasts.143 The elephant was featured in countless
songs, and on RDA women's bracelets, necklaces, and wrappers. Posters
sporting hand-drawn elephants were plastered on walls and waved in
demononstrations. Ballot designs were also aimed toward the nonliterate
population, the white RDA ballot emblazoned with an elephant.144 66
While Gellner, Anderson, and Anthony D. Smith imply that it was
the party elites who devised popular means to appeal to the masses,145
evidence from Guinea indicates that the nonliterate population created
as well as received the nationalist message. Local activists inspired
the party color and produced the uniforms and songs. Former RDA
militants Léon Maka and Mira Baldé contend that the party color and
uniform were primarily popular in origin. Maka attributed them to the
RDA women's leader, Mafory Bangoura?a cloth-dyer and seamstress without
formal schooling?and to rank-and-file members of the RDA women's
committees; the role of Sékou Touré's wife was only tertiary.146
Uniforms brought people together and strengthened their sense of
collective identity, Maka claimed. How ever, because RDA members were
generally from the lower classes, they could not afford expensive
material. "There was no money. Cloth cost a lot," Maka recalled. "RDA
women?market women?wore inexpensive cloth, while our adversaries wore
large boubous made from luxury cloth, like silk." Since RDA women could
not afford silk?or large quantities of any material?Maka observed,
Andrée Touré and Mafory Bangoura made blouses that went just to the
waist. These were called temuray. They were made out of percale, an
inexpensive cloth. The wrapper was dyed in the fashion of the country.
The [women] cloth-dyers did this with indigo. They gathered the indigo
leaves in the bush and beat them with pestles. It was the women who
decided that the blouse should be white. When the men saw that the
women had adopted white, they, too, automatically began to wear it.
Eventually, it became the national color of the RDA. Everyone wore it
on public occasions. This was not done by decree from above. No, it was
the people who decided to do it.
Mira Baldé concluded, "And white was easy, because it was common.
Percale was white. It did not cost much. So it was easy for the masses
to obtain."147 67
Grassroots actors brought ideas, practices, and methods to the
nationalist movement that dramatically reshaped the whole. As the above
example illustrates, African women were central to this process. While
women's formative influence on African nationalist movements has been
the subject of some scholarly inquiry, these studies have had little
impact on nationalist theory more generally.148 As McClintock notes,
"theories of nationalism have tended to ignore gender as a category
constitutive of nationalism itself."149 And yet nationalisms emerge
"through social contests that are ... always gendered."150 Proposing a
feminist theory of nationalism, McClintock advocates "bringing into
historical visibility women's active cultural and political
participation in national formations."151 68
Making women's participation visible requires a shift in focus
from the literate elite to the nonliterate base, where women were the
preeminent creators and performers of mass national spectacle. As
Geiger demonstrates for the nationalist movement in colonial Tanzania,
"women's work" included the creation and performance of nationalism
through song and dance.152 Similarly, in Guinea, RDA women proudly wore
their party uniforms as they sang and danced the nationalist message.
Oral transmission of information was crucial to the success of the RDA,
which targeted the large mass of Guineans who had little or no formal
education. As traditional storytellers and singers, women were deemed
the best sloganeers. They were the practiced creators of ideas, images,
and phrases that appealed to the nonelite population.153 69
Most significantly, it was nonliterate women who composed the
songs that spread the nationalist message throughout the territory.154
"The women composed these songs," claimed Fatou Kéïta, a Susu
seamstress. "They did it spontaneously. There was not one author. When
somebody found a song, they sang it. The next person heard it and sang
it, and so on. It spread like that."155 Néné Diallo, a Peul cloth-dyer,
agreed: "There were countless songs Day after day, songs were made up.
Everyone sang songs. We repeated the songs of others as they did ours."
156 Fatou Diarra, a former militant of Malinke and Senegalese descent,
recalled precisely how women mobilized through song:
Women went to the markets every day If there was a new song, all the
women learned it and sang it in the taxis, teaching one another. When
there was an event, the leader went to the market with the song to
teach it to the other women.
After the 1954 elections, women sang at the markets that the
colonial authorities had rigged the elections. "You women who go up,
You women who go down. The other party has stolen our votes, Stolen the
votes of Syli." All the women sang this song, so by the time they heard
the election results, they already knew that they had been cheated,
that the election had been rigged.157 70
The June 1954 National Assembly elections, which pitted Sékou
Touré against Barry Diawadou, were deemed fraudulent by independent
outside observers. The official pronouncement of Barry Diawadou as the
winner fueled public anger against the state.158 The message of
betrayal?and steadfast adherence to the people's choice?was spread
through song. Aissatou N'Diaye, an RDA activist of Tukulor-Senegalese
ancestry, remembered the intense local reaction to the official
results:
When it was said that Sékou had lost, there was a popular revolt ...
Sékou was not in Conakry; he was campaigning in the interior ... We
prepared songs for his return. We gathered at Fanta Camara's to prepare
the songs. We asked the crowd to make up a song that would be sung ...
He came at dusk or late afternoon ... By then the song was known to
everyone in town, even to vagabonds. The song went like this:
The saboteurs said they were the leaders
Whereas Mr. Touré said he is not the leader
But he gets to lead the country
Look, people, at the RDA
Look, people, at the RDA
RDA women, unite
Laugh with me, Touré
Laugh with me, Touré.159
Another song composed for the occasion, which was punctuated by mooing
cows, derided Barry Diawadou's alleged victory as a fraud effected by
inflated voter rolls. Vote rigging was deemed particularly notorious in
the Futa Jallon, the candidate's home and bastion of the Peul
aristocracy. Swaying and mooing like a cow, N'Diaye demonstrated how
the people had sung:
Look, people, at Barry Diawadou
Look, people, at Barry Diawadou
The cows have voted for you in the Futa
"Mbu, mbe," we don't want you.160
When Sékou Touré arrived in Conakry, a crowd of some 30,000 supporters
received him, crying, "Syli! Syli!" and singing:
The elephant has entered the city
Yes, the elephant has arrived
The city is full
Because the elephant has arrived.161
Women sang and danced all night in front of Sékou Touré's home,
informing the world that despite the official results, Sékou Touré?the
mighty elephant?was the people's choice.162 71
With song as their chosen medium, RDA women praised the party,
ridiculed the opposition, and commented on recent political events. The
songs' idiom and content provide a window into the popular culture that
sustained the nationalist movement. Sexually charged lyrics were
common. Some were meant to shame political laggards, others to mock
political rivals. Publicly disgracing hesitant or retrograde men, women
humiliated them through songs that questioned their virility.163 Police
reports describe RDA women, in groups of a hundred or more, parading
through the capital city, carrying banners, singing political songs,
and casting aspersions on Sékou Touré's chief rival, Barry Diawadou.
Diawadou frequently was derided as being cowardly and uncircumcised?a
mere boy rather than a real man.164 In one such song, he was accused of
having fled from the capital city, an RDA stronghold, to the relative
safety of the interior:
Barry Diawadou left Conakry
To go to Upper Guinea
Because he found
That Syli is always in the lead
Barry was slapped like a dog
The penis of Barry
Is circumcised this time!165
Although their political content was new, songs that ridiculed the
virility of their male targets were in keeping with long-standing
practices among Susu women. Historically, Susu women had used sexually
explicit songs and dances to publicly humiliate and sanction men who
had abused their wives. Party leaders?generally Western-educated male
elites?were embarrassed by these practices and tried, unsuccessfully,
to discourage them.166 The popular origin of this critical means of
communication is thus beyond dispute. 72
The waves of anticolonial protest that swept the African and Asian
continents in the postwar decade were an amalgamation of elite and
popular politics. Manifold acts of anticolonial resistance contributed
to the development of full-fledged movements for national self-
determination and independence. Many of these movements belonged to the
progressive political tradition of "inclusive nationalism," in which
ethnically and religiously diverse peoples were mobilized into a single
nationalist movement. The product of both European and indigenous
ideals, the nationalist movements were led by educated elites, but they
were firmly grounded in the urban and rural populace. Only those
movements that generated mass support were successful in bringing about
national independence. Their leaders focused on population groups
already engaged in anticolonial resistance and mobilized around
grievances that these groups had previously identified. The momentum
galvanized by the grassroots was thus directed toward the nationalist
cause. While the lower classes responded to elite appeals, they also
brought their own ideas and objectives to the anticolonial struggle.
They employed strategies and methods that spoke to their concerns and
images that resonated with their cultures. Thus, nationalist
mobilization was neither top down nor bottom up. It was, unequivocally,
both. 73
Guinea's postwar nationalist movement, led by the Rassemblement
Démocratique Africain, was emblematic of these trends. The Guinean RDA
strove to build a nation from a population that was ethnically and
linguistically heterogeneous. Party leaders focused on that which was
common to the largest number of people: a shared precolonial history,
religion, and experience of French colonialism. From this common past,
a future as one nation was imagined, and the struggle to realize it was
launched. Although they were mobilized by elites into the nationalist
movement, "ordinary Guineans" were not passive recipients of ideas
instilled from above. They brought their own ideas and experiences to
the table, informing the ways in which nationalism was understood. The
methods of mobilization, like the contents of the message, were
influenced by the grassroots. Lower classes as well as elites adapted
indigenous cultural forms for new purposes and made imported ones their
own. 74
Why revisit the case of Guinea nearly five decades after its
independence? Because Guinea's postwar nationalist movement provides
the raw material that allows us to better understand the interaction
between leaders and the rank and file in imagining and creating a
nation. It helps us to construct a new theoretical and methodological
framework for nationalist mobilization throughout the colonized world.
In this regard, Guinea's significance far outstrips its size. 75
I would like to thank Mark Peyrot for urging me to write this article,
and the Research and Sabbatical Committee at Loyola College for
providing financial support. I am grateful to Timothy Scarnecchia, my
colleagues in the Loyola College History Department, and anonymous AHR
reviewers for their extremely helpful comments. Unless otherwise
indicated, all translations from French language sources are mine, and
I conducted all interviews, in collaboration with Siba N. Grovogui. I
transcribed and translated the interviews that were conducted in
French; those conducted in Susu and Malinke were transcribed and
translated by Siba N. Grovogui.
Elizabeth Schmidt is Professor of History at Loyola College in
Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-
Madison in 1987. Her books include Mobilizing the Masses: Gender,
Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939?1958
(2005); Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of
Zimbabwe, 1870?1939 (1992); and Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S.
Business Support for Apartheid (1980). Her 1992 book was a finalist for
the African Studies Association's Herskovits Award and was named an
Outstanding Academic Book for 1994 by Choice. Schmidt is currently
working on a book entitled Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946?
1958, which examines the decade-long struggle between grassroots
activists and nationalist leaders for control of the political agenda,
in the context of Cold War repression. Her research on Guinea has been
supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social
Science Research Council, and the Fulbright program.
Notes
1 Patrick Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880?1985 (New York,
1988), 148?149; Ruth Schachter Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-
Speaking West Africa (Oxford, 1964), 400.
2 Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Archives Nationales (de France)
(CAOM), Carton 2181, dos. 6, Gouverneur, Guinée Française, Conakry, à
Ministre, F.O.M., Paris, "Discours Prononcé par le Président Sékou
Touré, le 14 Septembre 1958," September 15, 1958, #0191/CAB; Carton
2181, dos. 6, Gouverneur, Guinée Française, Conakry, à Ministre, F.O.
M., Paris, "Motion du Parti Démocratique de la Guinée en Date du 14
Septembre 1958," September 15, 1958, #0191/CAB; Carton 2181, dos. 6,
Gouverneur, Guinée Française, Conakry, à Ministre, F.O.M., Paris,
"Nouvelles Locales Reçues de l'A.F.P. en Date du 19 Septembre 1958,"
September 19, 1958, #2276/CAB; "La Résolution," La Liberté, September
23, 1958, 2; Georges Chaffard, Les Carnets Secrets de la
Décolonisation, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967), 2: 204, 206; Morgenthau,
Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 219.
3 Interview with Bocar Biro Barry, Conakry, January 21, 1991. In his
September 14 address, Sékou Touré made reference to the proindependence
positions already taken by trade union, student, and youth
organizations. CAOM, Carton 2181, dos. 6, "Discours Prononcé par le
Président Sékou Touré, le 14 Septembre 1958." See also "Unanimement le
28 Septembre La Guinée Votera NON," La Liberté, September 23, 1958, 1?
2. Former university student leader Charles Diané also claims that
Sékou Touré opted for the "No" vote in the eleventh hour?pushed by the
student movement. Charles Diané, La F.E.A.N.F. et Les Grandes Heures du
Mouvement Syndical étudiant Noir (Paris, 1990), 128?129.
4 See, for instance, "Unanimement le 28 Septembre," 1?2; "Les Résultats
du Scrutin," La Liberté, October 4, 1958, 5.
5 Archives de Guinée (AG), AM-1339, Idiatou Camara, "La Contribution de
la Femme de Guinée à la Lutte de Libération Nationale (1945?1958),"
Mémoire de Fin d'études Supérieures, IPGAN, Conakry, 1979, 111.
6 Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 108; Chaffard, Les Carnets
Secrets, 2: 177, 193?194, 196; Lansiné Kaba, Le "Non" de la Guinée à De
Gaulle (Paris, 1989), 80?86; Pierre Messmer, Après Tant de Batailles:
Mémoires (Paris, 1992), 234; Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope:
Renewal and Endeavor, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New York, 1971), 55.
7 De Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 55.
8 Chaffard, Les Carnets Secrets, 2: 194.
9 See, for instance, Sylvia G. Haim, ed., Arab Nationalism: An
Anthology (Berkeley, Calif., 1962); Patrick Seale, The Struggle for
Syria: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics, 1945?1958 (New Haven, Conn.,
1965); Ray T. Smith, "The Role of India's `Liberals' in the Nationalist
Movement, 1925?1947," Asian Survey 8, no. 7 (July 1968): 607?624; David
G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885?1925 (Berkeley, Calif.,
1971).
10 Ayesha Jalal and Anil Seal, "Alternative to Partition: Muslim
Politics between the Wars," Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 (1981): 415?
454; Farzana Shaikh, "Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial
India: The Making of Pakistan," Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 3 (1986):
539?557; Youssef M. Choueiri, Arab History and the Nation-State: A
Study in Modern Arab Historiography, 1820?1980 (New York, 1989);
Youssef M. Choueiri, Arab Nationalism?A History: Nation and State in
the Arab World (Malden, Mass., 2000); David E. F. Henley,
"Ethnogeographic Integration and Exclusion in Anticolonial Nationalism:
Indonesia and Indochina," Comparative Studies in Society and History
37, no. 2 (April 1995): 286?324; Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: Between
Islam and the Nation-State, 3rd ed. (New York, 1997); Robert H. Taylor,
The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa (Stanford, Calif., 2002).
11 Rajat Ray, Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and
Conflict of Interests in Calcutta City Politics, 1875?1939 (New Delhi,
1979); Nasir Islam, "Islam and National Identity: The Case of Pakistan
and Bangladesh," International Journal of Middle East Studies 13, no. 1
(February 1981): 55?72; Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate:
The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920?1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1987);
Dilip M. Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India:
Malabar, 1900?1948 (Cambridge, 1994); Sanjay Seth, "Rewriting Histories
of Nationalism: The Politics of `Moderate Nationalism' in India, 1870?
1905," AHR 104, no. 1 (February 1999): 95?116; Hanna Batatu, Syria's
Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their
Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1999); Taj-ul-Islam Hashmi, "Peasant
Nationalism and the Politics of Partition: The Class-Communal Symbiosis
in East Bengal, 1940?1947," in Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, eds.,
Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the
Subcontinent (New York, 1999), 6?41.
12 See Gail Minault, "Urdu Political Poetry during the Khilafat
Movement," Modern Asian Studies 8, no. 4 (October 1974): 459?471; Gail
Minault, "Islam and Mass Politics: The Indian Ulama and the Khilafat
Movement," in Donald E. Smith, ed., Religion and Political
Modernization (New Haven, Conn., 1974), 168?182; Gail Minault, The
Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in
India (New York, 1982); Sandria B. Freitag, "The Roots of Muslim
Separatism in South Asia: Personal Practice and Public Structures in
Kanpur and Bombay," in Edmund Burke, III and Ira M. Lapidus, eds.,
Islam, Politics, and Social Movements (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 115?
145.
13 Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in
India (Berkeley, Calif., 1994); James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties:
Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire
(Berkeley, Calif., 1998); Nels Johnson, Islam and the Politics of
Meaning in Palestinian Nationalism (Boston, 1982); Ted Swedenburg, "The
Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936?1939)," in
Burke and Lapidus, Islam, Politics, and Social Movements, 169?203.
14 Pamela Price, "Revolution and Rank in Tamil Nationalism," Journal of
Asian Studies 55, no. 2 (May 1996): 365.
For the use of indigenous cultural and religious symbols and
practices by resurgent Asante nationalists in independent Ghana, see
Jean M. Allman, "The Youngmen and the Porcupine: Class, Nationalism and
Asante's Struggle for Self-Determination, 1954?1957," Journal of
African History 31, no. 2 (1990): 263?264, 272, 274?277; Jean Marie
Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent
Ghana (Madison, Wis., 1993), 6, 9?10, 16?17, 19, 28, 41?46, 49, 62, 65,
97, 131, 140, 160, 183?184; Pashington Obeng, "Gendered Nationalism:
Forms of Masculinity in Modern Asante of Ghana," in Lisa A. Lindsay and
Stephan F. Miescher, eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa
(Portsmouth, N.H., 2003), 203?206.
15 Israel Gershoni, "Rethinking the Formation of Arab Nationalism in
the Middle East, 1920?1945," in James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni,
eds., Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York, 1997),
25.
16 See, for instance, James S. Coleman, "Nationalism in Tropical
Africa," American Political Science Review 48, no. 2 (June 1954): 404?
426; James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley,
Calif., 1958); Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New
York, 1957); David Apter, Ghana in Transition (Princeton, N.J., 1963);
Robert I. Rotberg, The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The
Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873?1964 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Robert
I. Rotberg, "African Nationalism: Concept or Confusion?" Journal of
Modern African Studies 4, no. 1 (May 1966): 33?46; Carl G. Rosberg,
Jr., and John Nottingham, The Myth of "Mau Mau": Nationalism in Kenya
(Stanford, Calif., 1966); John Lonsdale, "The Emergence of African
Nations: A Historiographical Analysis," African Affairs 67, no. 266
(1968): 11?28; J. M. Lonsdale, "Some Origins of Nationalism in East
Africa," Journal of African History 9, no. 1 (1968): 119?146.
17 See, for instance, Coleman, "Nationalism in Tropical Africa," 407?
408; Lonsdale, "Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa," 119?120,
140?141, 146; Lonsdale, "Emergence of African Nations," 11, 25.
18 Coleman, for instance, maintained that "the student of political
nationalism is concerned mainly with the attitudes, activities, and
status of the nationalist-minded Western-educated elite." Coleman,
"Nationalism in Tropical Africa," 425.
19 Lonsdale, "Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa," 146.
20 Lonsdale, "Emergence of African Nations," 25; see also Lonsdale,
"Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa," 119.
21 Lonsdale, "Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa," 140?141,
146.
22 Susan Geiger, "Tanganyikan Nationalism as `Women's Work': Life
Histories, Collective Biography and Changing Historiography," Journal
of African History 37, no. 3 (1996): 468?469.
23 Susan Geiger, TANU Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of
Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955?1965 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1997), 14, 66.
24 See Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa,
219?254; Jean Suret-Canale, La République de Guinée (Paris, 1970), 141?
146, 159?172; Claude Rivière, Guinea: The Mobilization of a People,
trans. Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 51?
82; Victor D. Du Bois, "Guinea," in James S. Coleman and Carl G.
Rosberg, Jr., eds., Political Parties and National Integration in
Tropical Africa (Berkeley, Calif., 1970), 186?215; L. Gray Cowan,
"Guinea," in Gwendolen M. Carter, ed., African One-Party States
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), 149?236. Other well-known works perpetuate the
top-down approach of earlier scholars. Yves Person, for example,
conflates the Guinean RDA with the person of Sékou Touré, erroneously
assuming that the party leader had "autocratic power" in the
preindependence period and that he imposed his will on the party.
Sylvain Soriba Camara and 'Ladipo Adamolekun present grand narratives
of events, once again focusing on governing and party structures,
policies, and leaders. Yves Person, "French West Africa and
Decolonization," in Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, eds., The
Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization, 1940?1960 (New Haven,
Conn., 1982), 141?172; Sylvain Soriba Camara, La Guinée Sans La France
(Paris, 1976); 'Ladipo Adamolekun, "The Road to Independence in French
Tropical Africa," in Timothy K. Welliver, ed., African Nationalism and
Independence (New York, 1993), 66?79; 'Ladipo Adamolekun, Sékou Touré's
Guinea: An Experiment in Nation Building (London, 1976).
25 Sidiki Kobélé Kéïta, Le P.D.G.: Artisan de l'Indépendance Nationale
en Guinée (1947?1958), 2 vols. (Conakry, 1978). Unfortunately, Kéïta's
two-volume work has not been circulated widely outside of Guinea.
26 See, for instance, Margarita Dobert, "Civic and Political
Participation of Women in French-Speaking West Africa" (Ph.D.
dissertation, George Washington University, 1970); Claude Rivière, "La
Promotion de la Femme Guinéenne," Cahiers d'études Africaines 8, no. 31
(1968): 406?427. Dobert does not focus exclusively on Guinea or the
postwar nationalist period. Rivière focuses primarily on Guinea's
postindependence period.
27 Camara, "Contribution de la Femme."
28 Studies of Muslim-Hindu violence and the partition of India are
notable exceptions to this generalization.
29 See, for instance, Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for
Understanding (Princeton, N.J., 1993); Michael Ignatieff, Blood and
Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York, 1994); Michael
Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience
(New York, 1998).
30 E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth,
Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1992), 102, 121; E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age
of Empire, 1875?1914 (New York, 1987), 143, 146; E. J. Hobsbawm, The
Age of Capital, 1848?1875 (New York, 1975), 84, 89. See also Partha
Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse? (Minneapolis, 1993), 9.
31 Henley refers to this phenomenon as "integrative," as opposed to
"inclusive," nationalism, which he contrasts with "exclusive"
nationalism. See Henley, "Ethnogeographic Integration," 286, 289?290.
32 These themes are expanded upon in my recent book. See Elizabeth
Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the
Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939?1958 (Portsmouth, N.H., 2005).
33 Geiger, TANU Women, 14.
34 See E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789?1848
(London, 1962).
35 For an in-depth discussion of this subject, see Schmidt, Mobilizing
the Masses.
36 For further elaboration, see Elizabeth Schmidt, "`Emancipate Your
Husbands!' Women and Nationalism in Guinea, 1953?1958," in Jean Allman,
Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi, eds., Women in African Colonial
Histories (Bloomington, Ind., 2002), 282?304; Schmidt, Mobilizing the
Masses, chap. 5.
37 First delivered as a lecture in 1882, this essay has been published
in English as Ernest Renan, "What Is a Nation?" in Geoff Eley and
Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (New York, 1996),
42?55.
38 Miroslav Hroch, "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation:
The Nation-Building Process in Europe," in Eley and Suny, Becoming
National, 61; Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival
in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of
Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, trans. Ben Fowkes
(Cambridge, 1985), 4?5. See also Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism
since 1780, 87.
39 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York, 1991), 6?7. See also
Anthony D. Smith, State and Nation in the Third World: The Western
State and African Nationalism (New York, 1983), 6.
40 Guinea is a classic example of Breuilly's "idea of the nation as a
project, a unity to be fashioned out of the fight for independence."
John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1994), 7.
41 Interview with Néné Diallo, Conakry, April 11, 1991. When discussing
party policies or initiatives, informants frequently attributed them
personally to Sékou Touré, secretary-general of the Guinean branch of
the RDA.
42 Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 145; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism
since 1780, 18?19; Thomas Hodgkin, African Political Parties: An
Introductory Guide (Gloucester, Mass., 1971), 163?164.
43 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and
Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 10, 26, 74.
44 Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900?1945,
trans. Till Gottheiner (New York, 1971), 383, 391. See Sékou Touré's
critique of African education under French colonialism: Sékou Touré,
"Le Leader Politique Considéré Comme le Représentant d'une Culture,"
Présence Africaine, nos. 24?25 (February?May 1959): 104?115; Sékou
Touré, "L'élite Africaine Dans Le Combat Politique," Discours
Enregistré du Président Sékou Touré Adressé aux Membres du Congrès des
Hommes de Culture Noire, March 26, 1959, in Sékou Touré, L'Action
Politique du Parti Démocratique de Guinée (Paris, 1959), 161?176.
45 Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (New
York, 2000), 31?78; Sékou Touré, "L'élite Africaine Dans Le Combat
Politique," 161?176; Eileen Julien, "African Literature," in Phyllis M.
Martin and Patrick O'Meara, eds., Africa, 3rd ed. (Bloomington, Ind.,
1995), 297?298; Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 110, 179;
Smith, State and Nation in the Third World, 55; Hodgkin, African
Political Parties, 163.
46 Sékou Touré, "L'élite Africaine Dans le Combat Politique," 161?176;
Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 11, 14,
137?138, 144?146; Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 110, 179;
Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 172, 174?176; Smith, State and
Nation in the Third World, 54?55.
47 Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS), 2G47/121, Guinée Française,
Affaires Politiques et Administratives, "Revues Trimestrielles des
événements, 3ème Trimestre 1947," December 5, 1947, #389 APA; Manning,
Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 3, 179.
48 While studying in France in 1952, Fodéba Kéïta established Les
Ballets Africains, which consciously borrowed dance forms and themes
from all the Guinean ethnic groups, blending them into a new "Guinean"
whole. Kéïta was also an accomplished playwright and poet in the
Négritude tradition. In 1960, Guinean scholar D. T. Niane committed to
writing the legendary oral epic "Sundiata," which celebrated the
founding of the thirteenth-century Mali empire. See Muriel Devey, La
Guinée (Paris, 1997), 290; Aly Gilbert Iffono, Lexique Historique de la
Guinée-Conakry (Paris, 1992), 98; Morgenthau, Political Parties in
French-Speaking West Africa, 14, 251; Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan
Africa, 176; D. T. Niane, Soundjata, ou l'Epopée Mandingue (Paris,
1960).
49 Gabriel d'Arboussier, "Une Dangereuse Mystification de la Théorie de
la Négritude," La Nouvelle Critique, no. 7 (June 1949): 34?47; Peter S.
Thompson, "Negritude and a New Africa: An Update," Research in African
Literatures 33, no. 4 (2002): 143, 146, 148; R. W. Johnson, "Sekou
Touré and the Guinean Revolution," African Affairs 69, no. 277 (October
1970): 351. After independence, Sékou Touré developed his own theories
of African socialism and the African personality?and continued his
vehement critique of Négritude. See, for instance, Sékou Touré, "Le
Leader Politique Considéré Comme le Représentant d'une Culture," 104?
115; Sékou Touré, "L'élite Africaine Dans Le Combat Politique," 161?
176; Sékou Touré, "The Republic of Guinea," International Affairs 36,
no. 2 (April 1960): 169; Ahmed Sékou Touré, Revolution, Culture and
Panafricanism (Conakry, 1978), 11, 13, 71, 97, 175?177, 190?191, 196?
204.
50 Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 380?382, 387,
391, 487; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa,
14?15, 23, 85; Cowan, "Guinea," 153?154, 157?158. See also Anderson,
Imagined Communities, 115?116, 140.
51 "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789)," in
John A. Maxwell and James J. Freidberg, eds., Human Rights in Western
Civilization: 1600 to the Present (Dubuque, Iowa, 1991), 26.
52 Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 387, 391;
Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 14; ANS,
17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Kankan, "Renseignements
A/S Conférence Publique du R.D.A. du 30 Oct. 1954," November 5, 1954,
#2894/1119, C/PS.2. See also Anderson, Imagined Communities, 118, 140?
141; Smith, State and Nation in the Third World, 31; Hodgkin,
Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 170; Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and
States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of
Nationalism (Boulder, Colo., 1977), 328?330, 436.
53 For an in-depth discussion of these issues, see Frederick Cooper,
Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and
British Africa (New York, 1996); Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts:
The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857?1960
(Portsmouth, N.H., 1991); Nancy Ellen Lawler, Soldiers of Misfortune:
Ivoirien Tirailleurs of World War II (Athens, Ohio, 1992); Catherine
Coquery-Vidrovitch, "Nationalité et Citoyenneté en Afrique Occidentale
Français\[e\]: Originaires et Citoyens dans Le Sénégal Colonial,"
Journal of African History 42, no. 2 (2001): 285?305; Schmidt,
Mobilizing the Masses, chaps. 2 and 3.
54 Hobsbawm, Age of Capital, 85.
55 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 88.
56 Hobsbawm, Age of Capital, 84?86, 88?89; Hobsbawm, Age of Empire,
144, 146?147; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 19?20, 33,
63, 87?88, 102. See also Anderson, Imagined Communities, 135.
57 ANS, 21G13, "état d'Esprit de la Population," December 1?15, 1950;
Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 233.
58 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 14?15,
85.
59 Ibid., 23, 25?26; Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 169, 233; Cooper, Decolonization
and African Society, 159.
60 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 227.
61 AG, 2Z27, "Syndicat Professionnel des Agents et Sous-Agents
Indigènes du Service des Transmissions de la Guinée Française,"
Conakry, March 18, 1945; Personal Archives of Joseph Montlouis: Letter
from Joseph Montlouis, Conakry, to Jean Suret-Canale, Conakry, April 5,
1983; interviews with Mamadou Bela Doumbouya, Conakry, January 26,
1991, and Joseph Montlouis, Conakry, March 3 and 6, 1991; Kéïta, P.D.
G., 1: 176, 180, 186; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking
West Africa, 229; Johnson, "Sekou Touré and the Guinean Revolution,"
351?353.
62 ANS, 17G573, "Les Partis Politiques en Guinée, 1er Semestre 1951";
17G573, Gendarmerie, A.O.F., "En Guinée Française," September 12, 1951,
#174/4; 17G573, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Conakry, "Rapport
de Quinzaine du 1er au 15 Octobre 1951," #1847/1019, C/PS.2; 17G573,
Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Revue Trimestrielle, 3ème
Trimestre 1951," November 24, 1951; 17G573, Comité Directeur, P.D.G.,
"Analyse de la Situation Politique en Afrique Noire et des Méthodes du
R.D.A. en Vue de Dégager un Programme d'Action," ca. January 14, 1952;
Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 241?242; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-
Speaking West Africa, 26, 98; Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa,
147.
63 See Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses, chaps. 5, 6, and 7. For a more
general discussion of this phenomenon, see Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and
Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
(Princeton, N.J., 1996), 183?217.
64 Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry
into the Foundations of Nationality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1966),
97. See also Hroch, "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed
Nation," 61.
65 Walter Rodney, "Jihad and Social Revolution in Futa Djalon in the
Eighteenth Century," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4,
no. 2 (June 1968): 269?274. The Malinke (Mandinka/Mandinga/Mandingo)
are part of the greater Mande social formation. Their language is
called Maninka. The Fulbe are sometimes referred to as "Fulani," a
Hausa term, or "Fula," a Mande term. In Guinea, the Fulbe are divided
into Tukulor, originally from the Futa Toro (Senegal), and Peul, from
the Futa Jallon (Guinea). The term "Peul" is a French corruption of the
word "Pullo" (singular form of "Fulbe"), which is the term used by the
people to describe themselves. The language of the Fulbe is Fulfulde;
that of the Peul is Pulaar. The term "Jallonke," or "men of the
Jallon," refers to the people of a region, rather than an ethnic group.
The Jallonke trace their roots to several populations. The Susu, part
of the greater Mande group, settled in the Futa Jallon in the
thirteenth century. They displaced or absorbed most of the original
inhabitants, including the Limbas, Landumas, Bagas, and Bassaris. The
resulting population was referred to collectively as the Jallonke. See
Andrew F. Clark, From Frontier to Backwater: Economy and Society in the
Upper Senegal Valley (West Africa), 1850?1920 (Lanham, Md., 1999), 41,
44?47; Jacques Richard-Molard, Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris,
1952), 93; Rodney, "Jihad and Social Revolution," 270.
66 Rodney, "Jihad and Social Revolution," 269?284.
67 Umar Tall's mid-nineteenth-century empire extended eastward from
French military bases on the lower Senegal River to the ancient city of
Timbuktu on the Niger River. His capital, Dinguiraye, was in the Futa
Jallon. Some decades later, Samori Touré built an empire that included
Upper Guinea and the forest region and extended eastward to modern
Ghana. See Rodney, "Jihad and Social Revolution," 269?284; A. S. Kanya-
Forstner, "Mali-Tukulor," in Michael Crowder, ed., West African
Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Occupation (New York,
1971), 53?79; Yves Person, "Guinea-Samori," trans. Joan White, in
Crowder, West African Resistance, 111?143; Daniel R. Headrick, The
Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth
Century (New York, 1981), 119?120; Philip Curtin, Steven Feierman,
Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina, African History: From Earliest Times
to Independence, 2nd ed. (New York, 1995), 343?351.
68 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 73. Duara makes
similar claims for premodern China, India, and Japan; see Prasenjit
Duara, "Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and
When," in Eley and Suny, Becoming National, 152.
69 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 234;
see also Lonsdale, "Emergence of African Nations," 28.
70 For a general discussion of this tendency, see Renan, "What Is a
Nation?" 52?53; Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, "Introduction," in
Eley and Suny, Becoming National, 8; Duara, "Historicizing National
Identity," 164?165; Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 161; Lonsdale,
"Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa," 143. For alternative,
more critical readings of precolonial African political leaders, see
Jean Suret-Canale, "La Fin de la Chefferie en Guinée," Journal of
African History 7, no. 3 (1966): 459?493; Martin Klein, Slavery and
Colonial Rule in French West Africa (New York, 1998).
71 Person, "Guinea-Samori," 112; Headrick, Tools of Empire, 119?120;
interview with Bocar Biro Barry, Conakry, January 21, 1991. For more
critical views of Samori Touré, see the following papers, which were
presented on the panel "Samori Toure One Hundred Years On: Exploring
the Ambiguities," Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association,
Philadelphia, Pa., November 13, 1999: David C. Conrad, "Victims,
Warriors, and Power Sources: Portrayals of Women in Guinean Narratives
of Samori Toure"; Saidou Mohamed N'Daou, "Almamy Samory Toure: Politics
of Memories in Post-Colonial Guinea (1958?1984)"; Emily Osborn, "Samori
Toure in Upper Guinea: Hero or Tyrant?"; Jeanne M. Toungara,
"Kabasarana and the Samorian Conquest of Northwestern Cote d'Ivoire."
72 Smith notes that ethnicity "is more about cultural perceptions than
physical demography." What is at issue is not actual descent, but "the
sense of ancestry and identity that people possess." Anthony D. Smith,
"The Origins of Nations," in Eley and Suny, Becoming National, 117,
122. See also Hroch, "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed
Nation," 65; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West
Africa, 234?235.
73 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 234?
235; Sidiki Kobélé Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou Touré: L'Homme et son Combat Anti-
Colonial (1922?1958) (Conakry, 1998), 22?24, 28?29; Hodgkin, African
Political Parties, 30; Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 174;
Smith, "Origins of Nations," 121.
74 Quoted in Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West
Africa, 235. The orthography of African names was inconsistent during
the colonial period. While "Samori" is now the preferred spelling,
"Samory" is an accepted variant.
75 Historic "resisters" at times collaborated with the colonial
administration, usually to forge alliances against rival African
rulers. This more complicated reality was rarely acknowledged by the
RDA. For a discussion of the ambiguous roles played by Bokar Biro Barry
and Alfa Yaya Diallo, see Suret-Canale, "Fin de la Chefferie en
Guinée," 465?467; Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, 147?148.
76 Interview with Bocar Biro Barry, Conakry, January 21, 1991; Siba N.
Grovogui, personal communication, April 26, 1999; Suret-Canale, "Fin de
la Chefferie en Guinée," 464?471; Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule, 46,
143, 147?148, 189; Iffono, Lexique Historique de la Guinée-Conakry, 19,
119?120, 134?136, 171?172; Thomas E. O'Toole, Historical Dictionary of
Guinea (Republic of Guinea/Conakry), 2nd ed. (Metuchen, N.J., 1987),
16, 30.
77 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 235;
O'Toole, Historical Dictionary of Guinea, 34.
78 Interviews in Conakry with Léon Maka, February 20, 1991, and Joseph
Montlouis, February 28, 1991; Siba N. Grovogui, personal communication,
1991.
79 For similar trends elsewhere, see Minault, Khilafat Movement; Burke
and Lapidus, Islam, Politics, and Social Movements; Gelvin, Divided
Loyalties.
80La Liberté, December 28, 1954, quoted in Morgenthau, Political
Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 235.
81 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 236?
237. See also Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 61; ANS, 17G586,
Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements Objet: Réunion
Publique R.D.A. à Conakry et ses Suites," September 8, 1954, #2606/942,
C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
Objet: Fêtes Musulmanes à Conakry," May 26, 1955, #1054/439, C/PS.2;
Hodgkin, African Political Parties, 136.
82 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 71.
83 Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 61.
84 Interview with Aissatou N'Diaye, Conakry, April 8, 1991. See also
interview with Néné Diallo, Conakry, April 11, 1991.
85 ANS, 17G586, "Fêtes Musulmanes," May 26, 1955. See also Hodgkin,
Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 162?163.
86 ANS, 17G573, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
Objet: Incidents à Conakry," October 26, 1954, #2850/1094, C/PS.2.
87 Quoted in Hodgkin, African Political Parties, 138.
88 ANS, 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
Objet: Suite aux Incidents de Tondon," February 18, 1955, #389/160,
C/PS.2. M'Balia Camara, an officer of the RDA women's committee and
wife of the RDA president in Tondon (Dubréka circle), was killed by a
canton chief during a rampage against RDA supporters. The day she was
struck, February 9, 1955, was subsequently commemorated by the RDA and
set aside to honor women's role in the struggle for national
emancipation. "Incidents Graves à Tondon, Canton de Labaya, Cercle de
Dubréka," La Liberté, February 15, 1955, 1; "Les Grandioses Obsèques de
Camara M'Ballia," La Liberté, March 1, 1955, 1; Camara, "La
Contribution de la Femme," 132; interview with Aissatou N'Diaye,
Conakry, April 8, 1991.
89 For similar use of indigenous symbols by Asante nationalists in
colonial Ghana, see Allman, "Youngmen and the Porcupine," 263?264, 267,
272, 274?277; Allman, Quills of the Porcupine, 6, 9?10, 16?17, 19, 28,
41?46, 49, 62, 65, 97, 131, 140, 160, 183?184.
90 Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 59?60; ANS, 17G613, Guinée
Française, Services de Police, Conakry, "Renseignements A/S Situation
en Guinée, à la Veille du Dépot des Listes aux élections Cantonales du
31 Mars Prochain," March 9, 1957, #555/247, C/PS.2; 17G613, Guinée
Française, Services de Police, Conakry, "Renseignements A/S Réunions
Diverses tenues à Conakry," May 29, 1957, #1223/480, C/PS.2.
91 ANS, 17G613, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Conakry,
"Renseignements A/S Fête R.D.A. Donnée en l'Honneur de Bassikolo dans
la Nuit du 26 au 27 Janvier 1957," n.d., #235/107, C/PS.2; 17G613,
"Situation en Guinée," March 9, 1957. See also 17G586, "Fêtes
Musulmanes," May 26, 1955.
92 Quoted in Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 60. See also ANS,
17G613, "Situation en Guinée," March 9, 1957.
93 Siba N. Grovogui, personal communication, October 1991.
94 Judith Van Allen, "`Aba Riots' or Igbo `Women's War'? Ideology,
Stratification, and the Invisibility of Women," in Nancy J. Hafkin and
Edna G. Bay, eds., Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic
Change (Stanford, Calif., 1976), 60?62, 71?73. For a similar practice
among Ga women in colonial Ghana, see John Parker, Making the Town: Ga
State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Portsmouth, N.H., 2000), 52,
60?61.
95 Renan, "What Is a Nation?" 53.
96 See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 52?53, 113?114; Smith, State and
Nation in the Third World, Preface.
97 "General Act of the Conference of Berlin (1885)," in Bruce Fetter,
ed., Colonial Rule in Africa: Readings from Primary Sources (Madison,
Wis., 1979), 38.
98 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 138. See also Smith,
State and Nation in the Third World, 27.
99 Selecting names and regions associated with particular ethnic
groups, RDA leader Moricandian Savané wrote, "The misery which kills
TOGBA of Macenta is the same as that of Samba of Upper Guinea, Soriba
of lower Guinea, or Diallo of the Fouta Djallon." Moricandian Savané,
La Liberté, August 18, 1954, quoted in Morgenthau, Political Parties in
French-Speaking West Africa, 233.
100 See Smith, "Origins of Nations," 107, 113, 116; Hobsbawm, Nations
and Nationalism since 1780, 20, 33, 63; Breuilly, Nationalism and the
State, 6.
101 Kevin C. Dunn, Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of
Identity (New York, 2003), 75?76.
102 Ibid., 76.
103 For a more general discussion of these issues, see Hobsbawm,
Nations and Nationalism since 1780, 136?137; Mamdani, Citizen and
Subject, 21?25, 33, 37?61.
104 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 7.
105 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 20.
See also Anderson, Imagined Communities, 121?122. Anderson makes the
crucial point that imperial languages become the new vernaculars of
colonized peoples. In Guinea, the common vernacular was French. It was
the sole language of education, beginning in primary school. For the
educated elite, speaking in French was second nature. Anderson,
Imagined Communities, 113, 133?134, 138; Suret-Canale, French
Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 341, 380?382, 487; Morgenthau,
Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 11, 39; Kéïta, P.D.
G., 1: 73.
106 ANS, 2G43/109, Guinée Française, Chef du Service de l'Enseignement,
"Rapport Statistique Annuel sur l'Enseignement, Année Scolaire 1942?
1943," Conakry, August 1943; 2G45/131, Guinée Française, Chef du
Service de l'Enseignement, "Rapport de Rentrée, Année Scolaire, 1944?
1945," Conkary, January 13, 1945. See also AG, 5B47, Guinée Française,
Gouverneur, Conakry, à Ministre, F.O.M., Paris, October 25, 1947,
#711/APA; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa,
10?13, 20, 219; Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou Touré: L'Homme et son Combat, 11, 30?
31; Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 147; Manning, Francophone Sub-
Saharan Africa, 100?101.
107 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 147; Morgenthau, Political
Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 12?23; Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou
Touré: L'Homme et son Combat, 11, 30.
108 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 142, 147; Suret-Canale, French
Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 373?374, 377?378, 388; Morgenthau,
Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 11?13, 15; Manning,
Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 80, 81, 84, 101.
109 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 147.
110 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 12?13"
>
111 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 142?143; Morgenthau, Political
Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 20, 251; ANS, 17G573, "Rapport
Général d'Activité 1947?1950," presenté par Mamadou Madéïra Kéïta,
Secrétaire Général du P.D.G. au Premier Congrès Territorial du Parti
Démocratique de Guinée (Section Guinéenne du Rassemblement Démocratique
Africain), Conakry, October 15?18, 1950. For a more general discussion
of this phenomenon, see Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 48.
Notable RDA adversaries among Ponty alumni in Guinea included several
members of the French parliament: National Assembly deputies Yacine
Diallo, Mamba Sano, and Barry Diawadou and Council of the Republic
senator Fodé Mamadou Touré. Another Ponty graduate was Framoï Bérété,
president of the anti-RDA ethnic association Union du Mandé, and a
member of the equally hostile Comité d'Entente Guinéenne. The
vehemently anti-RDA secretary-general of the Guinean teachers' union,
Koumandian Kéïta, was a graduate of école Normale de Katibougou, the
Ponty equivalent in the French Soudan. Morgenthau, Political Parties in
French-Speaking West Africa, 222, 224?225; R. W. Johnson, "The Parti
Démocratique de Guinée and the Mamou `Deviation,'" in Christopher Allen
and R. W. Johnson, eds., African Perspectives: Papers in the History,
Politics and Economics of Africa Presented to Thomas Hodgkin
(Cambridge, 1970), 368; interviews in Conakry with Bocar Biro Barry,
January 21, 1991; Léon Maka, February 20, 1991; and Fodé Mamdou Touré,
March 13, 1991.
112 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 20?
21.
113école Normale de Katibougou graduate Koumandian Kéïta, an arch-rival
of the RDA and secretary-general of Guinea's powerful African teachers'
union, was a case in point. The deep antipathy that he and Sékou Touré
shared was both personal and political. ANS, 2G53/187, Guinée
Française, Secrétaire Général, "Revues Trimestrielles des événements,
1953: 3ème Trimestre," September 12, 1953, #862/APA; 2G55/150, Guinée
Française, Gouverneur, "Rapport Politique Mensuel, Août 1955,"
September 28, 1955, #487/APAS/CAB; 2G57/128, Guinée Française, Police
et Sûreté, "Synthèse Mensuelle de Renseignements Novembre 1957,"
Conakry, November 25, 1957, #2593/C/PS.2; AG, 2D297, Guinée Française,
Secrétaire Général du Comité de Coordination des Syndicats de
l'Enseignement Primaire Public de l'A.O.F., Conakry, à Gouverneur,
Conakry, October 11, 1954, #1/CCE; interview with Bocar Biro Barry,
Conakry, January 21, 1991.
114 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 147; Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou Touré:
L'Homme et son Combat, 24, 29, 32, 36; Sidiki Kobélé Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou
Touré: L'Homme du 28 Septembre 1958, 2nd ed. (Conakry, 1977), 29, 31;
B. Ameillon, La Guinée: Bilan d'une Indépendance?(Paris, 1964), 49; AG,
1E41, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Fiche de Renseignements
Biographiques Relative à M. Sékou Touré," January 2, 1956.
115 Bocar Biro Barry is a grandson of Almamy Bokar Biro Barry. However,
he spells his first name differently.
116 Interview with Bocar Biro Barry, Conakry, January 21, 1991; Kéïta,
Ahmed Sékou Touré: L'Homme et son Combat, 10?11, 30; Suret-Canale,
République de Guinée, 142. Morgenthau contends that strains between the
more and less educated Guinean elites were comparable to those that
existed in colonial Ghana. Basil Davidson writes that those who
mobilized for the Convention People's Party, which ultimately became
the ruling party of independent Ghana, were derisively referred to by
more educated opponents as "Standard VII Boys" or, in reference to
homeless youths who organized for the party by night and slept on
porches, "verandah boys, hooligans, flotsam and jetsam, town rabble."
Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 20?21;
Basil Davidson, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame
Nkrumah, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1989), 68, 70. See also Apter, Ghana
in Transition, 167, 207?208; Hodgkin, African Political Parties, 30?31.
117 Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 142?143; Morgenthau, Political
Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 12, 20, 251. See also Breuilly,
Nationalism and the State, 48?49; Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, 151;
Coleman, "Nationalism in Tropical Africa," 412.
118 AG, 5B49, Guinée Française, Secrétaire Général chargé de
l'Expédition des Affaires Courantes, pour le Gouverneur, Conakry, à
Haut Commissaire, Dakar, "Revue des événements du Quatrième Trimestre
1947," February 17, 1948, #35/APA.
119 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. See also Hroch, "From National
Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation," 67.
120 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 19?20; Tom Nairn, The Break-up
of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1977), 41.
121 For further elaboration, see Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses.
122 ANS, 2G43/25, Guinée Française, "Rapport de Tournée Effectuée du 27
Janvier au 9 Février par M. Chopin, Administrateur des Colonies,
Inspecteur du Travail, dans les Cercles de Conakry-Kindia-Forécariah,"
Conakry, April 2, 1943; 2G43/25, Guinée Française, Gouverneur, "Rapport
sur le Travail et la Main d'Oeuvre de la Guinée Française Pendant
l'Année 1943," Conakry, July 24, 1944, #994/IT; 2G46/50, Guinée
Française, Inspecteur des Colonies (Pruvost), Mission en Guinée,
"Rapport sur la Main d'Oeuvre en Guinée," Conakry, July 13, 1946,
#116/C; 2G46/50, Guinée Française, Inspecteur du Travail, "Rapport
Annuel du Travail, 1946," Conakry, February 15, 1947, #66/IT.GV.
123 ANS, 2G46/50, "Rapport sur la Main d'Oeuvre," July 13, 1946;
2G46/50, "Rapport Annuel du Travail, 1946." See also Virginia Thompson
and Richard Adloff, French West Africa (New York, 1969), 492.
124 See Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses; ANS, 2G41/21, Guinée Française,
"Rapport Politique Annuel, 1941"; 2G42/22, Guinée Française, "Rapport
Politique Annuel, 1942"; 2G46/50, "Rapport sur la Main d'Oeuvre," July
13, 1946; 2G47/121, "Revues Trimestrielles des événements, 3ème
Trimestre 1947"; AG, 1E42, Guinée Française, "Renseignements," Cercle
de Kankan, January 26, 1945, #66/C/APAN/31/1/46; 1E37, Guinée
Française, Cercle de Gaoual, Subdivision Centrale, "Rapport Politique
Annuel, Année 1947"; Suret-Canale, "Fin de la Chefferie en Guinée,"
462, 464, 467, 470, 479?480; Suret-Canale, République de Guinée, 95?98,
137?139; Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 80, 322?
325, 327, 341?342; Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 87?88, 99?102, 331; Klein, Slavery
and Colonial Rule, 212?213; Babacar Fall, Le Travail Forcé en Afrique-
Occidentale Française (1900?1945) (Paris, 1993), 279.
125 For further discussion of rivalry between "traditional" and
"modern" elites in African nationalist movements, see Seton-Watson,
Nations and States, 328?329, 341, 437.
126 Suret-Canale, "Fin de la Chefferie en Guinée," 459?460, 492; Kéïta,
P.D.G., 2: 147; interview with Mamadou Bela Doumbouya, Conakry, January
26, 1991.
127 AG, 2Z27, "Syndicat Professionnel des Agents et Sous-Agents
Indigènes du Service des Transmissions de la Guinée Française,"
Conakry, March 18, 1945; interviews with Joseph Montlouis (assistant
secretary-general, postal, telegraph, and telephone workers' union),
Conakry, March 3 and 6, 1991; Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou Touré: L'Homme du 28
Septembre, 41.
128 Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 180.
129 ANS, 17G573, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
A/S Activité de Certains Africains R.D.A.," February 24, 1948, #229/76
C; AG, 1E38, Guinée Française, Cercle de Kankan, "Rapport Politique
Annuel, Année 1948"; 1E38, Guinée Française, Cercle de N'Zérékoré,
"Rapport Politique Annuel, Année 1948." See also AG, 5B49, Guinée
Française, Inspecteur des Affaires Administratives, pour le Gouverneur,
Conakry, à Haut Commissaire, Dakar, September 11, 1948, #596/APA.
130 ANS, 17G529, Guinée Française, "Liste des Organisations
Professionnelles," 1952; 17G271, Gouverneur de Guinée Française,
Conakry, à Haut Commissaire, Dakar, "A/S Activité Syndicale," February
25, 1952, #85/APA; Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking
West Africa, 414.
131 Interview with Bocar Biro Barry, Conakry, January 21, 1991.
132 Tom Nairn, "Scotland and Europe," in Eley and Suny, Becoming
National, 84?85; see also Nairn, Break-up of Britain, 100; Anthony D.
Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge, 1995), 40.
133 See Chatterjee's critique of Anderson in this regard. Chatterjee,
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, 19?22; Chatterjee, Nation
and Its Fragments, 4?5. See also Anderson, Imagined Communities, 67,
113, 116, 135, 140?141.
134 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 12. See also Smith, "Origins of
Nations," 111, 124.
135 Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era, 40, 47. See also
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), 49.
136 Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 135?136; Gellner, Nations and
Nationalism, 63, 89; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 36?40.
137 Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 133, 135?136; Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism since 1780, 59.
138 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 24?25, 36?37, 40.
139 Anne McClintock, "`No Longer in a Future Heaven': Women and
Nationalism in South Africa," in Eley and Suny, Becoming National, 260,
273?274. See also Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 64, 67?68.
140 See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 23. For a discussion of these
issues in Africa more generally, see Hodgkin, African Political
Parties, 134?139.
141 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 238?
239, 243?244; interview with Léon Maka and Mira Baldé (Mme. Maka),
Conakry, February 20, 1991; ANS, 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de
Police, Kankan, "Renseignements A/S Arrivé Kankan, Sékou Touré et
Conférence Publique du 9 Novembre 1954," November 13, 1954, #2936/1142,
C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Kindia,
"Renseignements A/S Passage à Kindia du DéputéDiallo Sayfoulaye et
Compte-Rendu de Mandat de ce Parlementaire," July 17, 1956, #1396/503,
C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Mamou,
"Renseignements A/S Visite Parlementaire à Mamou," July 23, 1956,
#1444/512, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police,
Conakry, "Renseignements A/S Réunion Publique d'Informations tenue le
Jeudi 30 Août 1956, par le DéputéDiallo Saï foulaye, à Conakry, Salle
de Cinéma `VOX,'" August 31, 1956, #1761/619, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée
Française, Services de Police, Conakry, "Renseignements A/S Conférence
Publique d'Information, tenue le 16 Septembre 1956 par le P.D.G.-R.D.A.
au Cinéma `VOX' à Conakry," September 17, 1956, #1907/658, C/PS.2. See
also Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, 150, 159; Hodgkin,
African Political Parties, 134?139; Thompson and Adloff, French West
Africa, 60.
142 Interviews in Conakry with Léon Maka and Mira Baldé, February 20,
1991; Fatou Kéïta, April 7, 1991; and Aissatou N'Diaye, April 8, 1991.
See also Barbara A. Moss, "Clothed in Righteousness and Respect: The
Use of Uniforms within Zimbabwean Women's Ruwadzano in the Methodist
Church," paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the African Studies
Association, Atlanta, Ga., November 3, 1989.
143 Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 238;
Hodgkin, African Political Parties, 36, 38; Messmer, Après Tant de
Batailles, 234.
144 ANS, 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
Réunion Privée des Femmes R.D.A. à Conakry," October 7, 1954,
#2765/1033, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, Labé,
"Renseignements Objet: Situation Politique à Labé dans la Première
Quinzaine de Novembre 1954," November 23, 1954, #2999/1180, C/PS.2;
Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 77; Chaffard, Les Carnets
Secrets, 2: 177; Ruth Schachter-Morgenthau, Le Multipartisme en Afrique
de l'Ouest Francophone Jusqu'aux Indépendances: La Période Nationaliste
(Paris, 1998), photograph 29, following 230; Kéïta, Ahmed Sékou Touré:
L'Homme et son Combat, photograph "Carte de Voeux 1955 de Sékou Touré,"
following 136.
145 See Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 49; Smith, Nations and
Nationalism in a Global Era, 40, 47; Smith, "Origins of Nations," 120;
Anderson, Imagined Communities, 140.
146 Interview with Léon Maka and Mira Baldé, Conakry, February 20,
1991. For Mafory Bangoura's background, see "Les Femmes s'Organisent,"
La Liberté, August 18, 1954, 4; Kéïta, P.D.G., 1: 340, 345; Camara, "La
Contribution de la Femme," 43?44; interviews in Conakry with Bocar Biro
Barry, January 29, 1991; Léon Maka, February 20, 1991; Aissatou
N'Diaye, April 8, 1991.
147 Interview with Léon Maka and Mira Baldé, Conakry, February 20,
1991. See also interview with Aissatou N'Diaye, Conakry, April 8, 1991.
148 See Geiger, "Tanganyikan Nationalism as `Women's Work'"; Geiger,
TANU Women; LaRay Denzer, "Constance A. Cummings-John of Sierra Leone:
Her Early Political Career," Tarikh 7, no. 1 (1981): 20?32; LaRay
Denzer, "Women in Freetown Politics, 1914?61: A Preliminary Study,"
Africa 57, no. 4 (1987): 439?456; Cheryl Johnson, "Grassroots
Organizing: Women in Anti-Colonial Activity in Southwestern Nigeria,"
African Studies Review 25, no. 2 (September 1982): 137?157; Cheryl
Johnson, "Madam Alimotu Pelewura and the Lagos Market Women," Tarikh 7,
no. 1 (1981): 1?10; Nina Emma Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women's
Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900?1965 (Berkeley, Calif.,
1982); Cora Ann Presley, Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion, and
Social Change in Kenya (Boulder, Colo., 1992); Timothy Scarnecchia,
"Poor Women and Nationalist Politics: Alliances and Fissures in the
Formation of a Nationalist Political Movement in Salisbury Rhodesia,
1950?6," Journal of African History 37, no. 2 (1996): 283?310; Cherryl
Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (London, 1982). Many
studies emphasize women's contributions to male-dominated nationalist
movements?rather than their fundamentally formative roles. In the case
of Guinea, Margarita Dobert's 1970 doctoral dissertation skims the
surface of women's anticolonial activities. Far more insightful and
analytical is Idiatou Camara's unpublished undergraduate thesis, "La
Contribution de la Femme de Guinée à la Lutte de Libération Nationale
(1945?1958)." See Dobert, "Civic and Political Participation of Women";
Camara, "Contribution de la Femme."
149 Quoted in Eley and Suny, Becoming National, 259.
150 McClintock, "`No Longer in a Future Heaven,'" 260.
151 Ibid., 261.
152 Geiger, "Tanganyikan Nationalism as `Women's Work,'" 467, 469, 471?
472; Geiger, TANU Women, 162. For further discussion of women's
involvement in the "ideological reproduction of the collectivity" and
of women as "transmitters of its culture," see Nira Yuval-Davis and
Floya Anthias, "Introduction," in Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias,
eds., Woman-Nation-State (London, 1989), 7, 9?10.
153 Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 65; Mamadou Tounkara,
"Autour d'une Musique," La Liberté, November 9, 1954, 3; interview with
Fatou Diarra, Conakry, March 17, 1991.
154 See Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 80; Schmidt, Mobilizing
the Masses, chap. 5; Schmidt, "`Emancipate Your Husbands!'"; interviews
in Conakry with Léon Maka, February 20, 1991; Fatou Diarra, March 17,
1991; Néné Diallo, April 11, 1991; Fatou Kéïta, May 24, 1991.
155 Interviews with Fatou Kéïta, Conakry, April 7 and May 24, 1991. See
also interview with Léon Maka, Conakry, February 20, 1991.
156 Interview with Néné Diallo, Conakry, April 11, 1991.
157 Interview with Fatou Diarra, Conakry, March 17, 1991. See also
Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 80.
158 Centre de Recherche et de Documentation Africaine (CRDA), Claude
Gerard, "Incidents en Guinée Française, 1954?1955," Afrique
Informations, no. 34 (March 15?April 1, 1955): 5?7; Morgenthau,
Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa, 103, 106, 240.
159 Interview with Aissatou N'Diaye, Conakry, April 8, 1991.
160 Ibid. See also interviews with Fatou Kéïta, Conakry, April 7 and
May 24, 1991.
161 CRDA, Gerard, "Incidents en Guinée Française, 1954?1955," 9;
Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 78. See also interview with
Fatou Kéïta, Conakry, May 24, 1991.
162 Camara, "La Contribution de la Femme," 79.
163 Interviews in Conakry with Léon Maka, February 20, 1991; Léon Maka
and Mira Baldé, February 25, 1991; Fatou Kéïta, April 7, 1991; ANS,
17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements,"
September 8, 1954. For similar use of song elsewhere in Africa, see
Shirley Ardener, "Sexual Insult and Female Militancy," in Shirley
Ardener, ed., Perceiving Women (London, 1975), 29?30, 36?37; Caroline
Ifeka-Moller, "Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt: The Women's War of
1929, Eastern Nigeria," in Ardener, Perceiving Women, 132?133; Van
Allen, "`Aba Riots' or Igbo `Women's War'?" 60?61; Mba, Nigerian Women
Mobilized, 150; Geiger, "Tanganyikan Nationalism as `Women's Work,'"
473. Asante and Ga women in colonial Ghana also challenged men they
deemed cowardly?and thus effeminate?in the face of British colonialism;
see Obeng, "Gendered Nationalism," 193, 202?204; Parker, Making the
Town, 52, 71. The feminization of colonized males, and women's ridicule
of them, is discussed in Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 69?71.
164 ANS, 17G586, "Réunion Publique R.D.A. à Conakry," September 8,
1954; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements A/S
R.D.A. Conakry," April 19, 1955, #811/332, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée
Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements Objet: RDA à Conakry,"
April 27, 1955, #867/353, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de
Police, "Renseignements Objet: Incidents en Guinée," June 3, 1955,
#1095/463, C/PS.2; 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police,
"Renseignements Objet: R.D.A. à Conakry," June 6, 1955, #1106/469, C/PS.
2. See also 17G573, Guinée Française, Services de Police,
"Renseignements A/S Attroupement R.D.A. devant le Commissariat de
Police de Mamou, le 15 Mai 1956," May 19, 1956, #929/324, C/PS.2; AG,
1E41, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements A/S
Conférence Publique tenue le Lundi 14 Janvier 1957 à Conakry, Salle du
Cinéma `VOX,' par le P.D.G.-R.D.A.," January 15, 1957, #89/50/C/PS.2.
165 ANS, 17G586, Guinée Française, Services de Police, "Renseignements
Objet: R.D.A. Conakry," June 14, 1955, #1158/490, C/PS.2. The Susu song
was transcribed and translated into French by the police. The English
translation is mine.
166 Siba N. Grovogui, personal communication, 1991.
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